Illalbum

On Wednesday (8/11) morning, my host and I drove to Manayunk, which is a NW Philadelphia neighborhood, so I could see that neighborhood. Manayunk has a lot of bars and restaurants along its main street, and a lot of students and 20 somethings live there, so at 10 am on a Wednesday, not many people were out and about, and unfortunately, many of the businesses weren’t open, and we didn’t end up supporting the local economy. The Pottery Barn and Starbucks were open, but they were pretty much it. I’m still happy that I was able to at least see the neighborhood and check it off the list (even though I had forgotten my camera and thus don’t have photographic documentation).

After Manayunk, we drove into Conshohoken, which is across the river from Manayunk but is not in the city. I had never been to that town, either, and I was expecting to see many low-rise suburban office parks, and when we first entered the town from the highway, we did. However, about a mile away from the office parks, Conshohoken has an actual downtown that reminded me of the downtown area of Wayne (PA) on the Main Line, because of all of the small, well-kept and upscale shops.

After Conshohoken, I skated in Aston for the final time, and on the way back from the rink, tried water ice for the first time. I ashamedly had never eaten “wooder” ice before for some reason (I think because the Rita’s stand I passed on a regular basis is in Suburban Station, and I never really had time to stop), but I had a mango and vanilla custard wooder ice and thought it was quite good.

Back at my host’s apartment, we hung out and watched a movie before getting ready for . . . The Last Supper (or, as my host more cheerfully called it, Girls’ Night Out). Last year, on the evening before I left Philly, I went out to dinner at XIX and watched the sun set on the city (and then went to Naked Chocolate and drowned my sorrows in hot chocolate). This year, I wanted to do something similar, so my host, two skating friends, and I decided to go to Audrey Claire, which is a wonderful BYOB in Rittenhouse that I visited last year and where I really wanted to return.

The Last Supper at Audrey Claire was less traumatizing than it was last year; going out to dinner with friends certainly distracted me from my impending departure, and I got toasted, which has never happened before. I had a lovely meal from the summer menu—feta and garlic crusted baby rack of lamb with fresh mint and dill labne, baby asparugus, and mashed potatoes. My host brought her own bottle, since it was a BYOB, and I tried about 1 oz of white wine (pinot noir?), which okay/not great—at least I was able to swallow it, unlike every other alcoholic drink I’ve ever tried. For dessert, the four of us split a piece of chocolate cake covered in whipped cream and strawberries.

The weather that week in Philly was very hot (upper 90s) and humid, but by the time we left the restaurant, the evening had cooled down, and after a short walk through the Rittenhouse neighborhood, we drove back to City Line (and passed the lit-up Boathouse Row). I must note that the drive in (even though it was at 6:45ish) took about 35 min, but the drive outbound (9:15ish) only took 10—yay for the rush hour that I usually miss on the train.

The next morning, my host and I went out for breakfast at Ardmore Station Café and then to the airport. I was very, very sad to have to leave again, but there is a chance that I will be back this fall for a visit, so I am looking forward to that.

And the Last Supper was a lovely grand finale to my glorious summer in Philadelphia—a summer when I could say “The best of times / Is now” and mean it and when, if it wasn’t already very clear, I discovered that all I really need out of life is Philadelphia, figure skating, and penology.

This summer, save for a couple of posts in mid-July, I have been pretty diligent in not letting too much time pass between a blog-worthy event and a post. Unfortunately, though, this and the next post are coming about two weeks after the fact. These posts have been the hardest to get started, because they are the last post about my summer in the Illadelph, and while I plan to blog about trips to Philly this academic year, those posts will of course be less frequent than they have been this summer. And because it was hard to see my glorious summer end.

On the Sunday before I left (8/8), I lazed about in the morning and read the New York Times online. I realized that this was the first time since 4th of July weekend that I had lazed about, and while I felt a little guilty about not getting out and about and enjoying the city in the morning, I remembered a Seinfeld episode in which George wants to watch a movie in Jerry’s apartment, and when Jerry asks why George can’t just watch it in his own apartment, George replies with something about how it feels like he’s actually doing something productive with his day if he’s not sitting alone in his apartment watching a movie. This thought made me feel a little better about not going out that morning—I was just sitting around reading the New York Times, but it was not in my apartment.

After lunch, I went to the rink to watch some of the test session, including a(n adult) Tango Romantica test. A friend of mine took her (standard) Blues test, and because it was about 1.5 weeks before she left for college, people would come up to her as they left, because it was probably the last time they would see her before she came back for fall break. This reminded me of my sad goodbyes at the rink, both before leaving Oregon before I started college and last year before I left Philly.

The friend with whom I stayed for the remainder of my time in Philly was scheduled to arrive back in the Philly area to pick me (and my luggage) up in the mid-to-late afternoon (after she got back from the dance competition in Lake Placid), and at about 4, I met her back at my weekend location to move everything to her apartment near City Line Avenue.

On Sunday evening, we just hung out and watched Bravo, and on Monday and Tuesday, I skated in Aston, and when I wasn’t skating, my host and I took advantage of her apartment’s lovely air-conditioning. On Tuesday evening, though, I was driven to Wilmington so that I could take Viennese Waltz (again). I skated well, but I unfortunately didn’t pass (again—GRRRR). Two things that I enjoyed about testing in Wilmington, though are that 1. skaters get a 20 minute warm-up and a warm up for each dance, and skaters test immediately following their warm-up, so there’s no waiting around for others in one’s group and 2. around the ceiling of the rink are theater lights to use in ice shows. As I’ve mentioned previously, my coach and I had talked about thinking of Broadway when working on presentation, so I was a little excited and endlessly entertained by the presence of those lights.

Today I visited Eastern State Penitentiary, which is very significant in the history of penology. It was built after extensive lobbying of the commonwealth’s government by the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons (founded in 1787 by Benjamin Rush/now called the Pennsylvania Prison Society) and was in operation from 1829-1970. The building looks like a stone fortress from the outside and even has decorative ramparts, both of which contribute to the air of intimidation and to showing the power of the state.

The Penitentiary housed its inmates in solitary confinement (and in silence), which was a departure from the penal norm of housing all inmates together and allowing them to talk; the theoretical justification for solitary confinement was to allow inmates to focus on the spiritual in order to rehabilitate themselves and their souls. In fact, the cells only had a skylight for a window—a window facing God—and they were given Bibles as well as taught how to do woodwork, cobble shoes, etc., so that they could enter a trade when they were released. Inmates stayed in their cells for 23 hours per day and were only let out into individual yards slightly larger than their cells. At the beginning of the Penitentiary, most sentences were under two years and life sentences did not exist there.

Much research has been done on the psychological effects of solitary confinement in the Penitentiary (as well as in the modern day supermaximum security housing units and prisons, which, unlike the original Pennsylvania system, do not seem to support a rehabilitative or spiritual ideal), and Charles Dickens in particular railed against the system after a visit. However, the tours at the Penitentiary indicated that the reason solitary confinement and silence were abandoned was not because of a recognition of harm to the inmates; rather, it was due to budget and space constraints.

The Penitentiary remained open until 1970, and even housed Al Capone for about a year. After it closed and the inmates were transferred to the state correctional institution at Graterford, the building was abandoned. However, it was turned into a tourist attraction (it was a tourist attraction when it first opened in the early 1800s, too, and apparently visitors didn’t need security clearances to enter) and is now kept in “suspended disrepair.” The suspended disrepair includes walls with peeling paint, falling-apart and/or rusty furniture in dusty cells, and tree roots growing along the inside of a couple of the cell walls. The Penitentiary has overhead lights but no air conditioning, and I’m not sure what the heat situation is in the winter. I read, though, at the beginning of the tour that visitors had to wear hard hats on tours until 2005 and had to sign liability waivers until 2008.

The Penitentiary now holds tours, and I visited during Prison Escape weekend, so I watched a debate by two actors about a prison break and who could really claim credit for it. I didn’t do any of the other tours, because I unfortunately missed the ones in which I was really interested. I did do the audio tour, though, and spent about three hours in the prison. The prison also has a few art installations, including dioramas of prison life in the 1800s (both before and after solitary confinement was abandoned) as well as a reproduction of a cell from Guantanamo Bay that highlighted the differences and similarities between the conditions of confinement and theoretical justifications for those conditions. In addition, in one of the cells, a 12-minute silent film produced in 1929 for the centennial of the prison, so I viewed that as well.

After the tour, I walked back down through the lovely Fairmount neighborhood to Center City and caught the Broad Street Line to Tasker-Morris so that I could visit East Passyunk. It turns out that I was a little too far south when I attempted to visit a couple of weeks ago; when I visited Passyunk then, I was on West Passyunk and in a more working-class Italian neighborhood. This time, though, I went to the right part of the street and found upscale clothing stores and restaurants, a small square in the middle of the street with a fountain, and a Capogiro—clearly evidence that the neighborhood has “arrived.” I also saw a few hipsters.

After East Passyunk, I took the bus up to Walnut and read in Naked Chocolate, which both this and last summer has been a favourite reading spot. After I took the train out to the home of the people with whom I’m staying in Ardmore (my summer housing ended on Friday), I walked their dog (the first time I had ever walked one!), and then attempted to catch fireflies. I saw quite a few flying around last night but not as many tonight, for some reason—temperature and humidity were about the same.

On Wednesday I returned to the Rosenbach Museum and Library to do some archival research in their collections. My focus today was Marianne Moore, who bequeathed her papers as well as her entire Greenwich Village apartment living room to the Rosenbachs. I initially intended to see some of Thomas Jefferson’s papers (the Rosenbach has some of his documents, but not an extensive collection thereof), but I really only ended up having time for Moore. My interest in Moore was sparked by the McBride Gateway/Pembroke Arch at Bryn Mawr College; it has in front of it a quotation from a poem Moore wrote for Katherine McBride, an early president of the College.

I looked at correspondences Moore received from Bryn Mawr College concerning a class that she taught there (on how to order books as well as letters thanking her for agreeing to teach) as well as invitations to events with both the Smith and Bryn Mawr clubs of New York City. In addition, I read drafts (written on old envelopes as well as handwritten comments on typewritten drafts) of a few poems—“New York,” “The Fish,” and “My Lantern,” all of which I discussed when I wrote a final paper about Moore’s work in my sophomore year of college for a women in literature class. I really enjoyed looking at the differences between the drafts—where she added or cut lines. And I even found that she changed individual words between drafts—between a typewritten draft and one written on cardstock in neat cursive. The Rosenbach unfortunately does not have documents or drafts of a handful of her poems, and one of those is one of my favourite of her poems—“Progress.” She wrote it when she was an undergrad at Bryn Mawr and it was published in one of the College’s literary magazines, the Tipyn O’Bob. Since it was such an early poem, though, the Rosenbach did not have it, so that was a little disappointing.

After visiting the Rosenbach museum three times, I was very happy to be able to visit the archives, and I certainly hope that I can return and see more of Moore’s papers as well as those of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.

On both this Saturday and last Sunday, I worked in the afternoons at the Philadelphia Zoo on a research project with the researcher with whom I worked last summer on a much larger project. Without putting too much “in public” about the project, I can say that I had fewer tasks to complete this year than last, and I didn’t have to juggle papers and clipboards as furiously as I did last year.

I walked around the Zoo a little bit on Saturday after I finished my work for the day. I’m not really a zoo person, but I didn’t really walk around much last summer, so I decided that I should at least take a short stroll. I walked by a bunch of different animals but didn’t really stop to look at any of them; huge tortises and flamingoes stand out for me. I really just wanted to walk through the McNeil Avian Center, which opened in May 2009 and was where I spent a considerable amount of time last summer.

The Avian Center is really nice; it houses four different bird areas/rooms (African Savannah, Pacific Island, Tropical Rainforest, and Central American Shade Coffee Plantation) with birds that live in those habitats. In the rainforest, birds fly around above visitors’ heads, which is pretty cool. I got to see my favourite kind of birds on this visit that I remembered from last year—the Victoria Crowned Pigeon. This picture doesn’t show just how blue the bird is or the feathers on its head, but it at least gives the reader an idea of what it looks like:

I also walked by the new exhibit for the summer, which is actually a collection of ten Lego sculptures of wild animals (including penguins, golden lion tamarins, and a polar bear) and includes action steps visitors can take to help wild animals, such as recycling cell phone batteries and not buying products with palm oil. The preservation information was interesting, but the Zoo already has real animals that were also made out of Legos, so I’m not sure why they decided to add Lego animals.

Sunday was considerably cooler than it has been most of the summer (only about 80, not humid, and a little cloudy), so I just had a relaxing day of brunch and reading in Rittenhouse.

On Friday I was taken to dinner at a nice seafood restaurant on the Delaware, and I realized that I have never really sat and watched the river; it was quite a bit more interesting than I would have thought—barges and dinner cruises kept crossing the river.

On Saturday, I woke up early and went to 30th St. Station and caught a train to . . . Manhattan!! When I was living in Philly, I was able to visit the city very frequently—about once every other month in 2009 (less often before that). Unfortunately, though, this was my first trip there since December. I miss so many things about living in the Philadelphia area, but I’ll have to add “easy access to New York/Broadway” to the list.

Anyway, after I arrived at Penn Station, I took the 1 and N to 59th and walked through the already exceedingly hot and humid morning up 5th Avenue to get to the Frick Collection. On my way, I happened upon the Cupcake Stop truck, which is a big truck that drives around the city and stops at various locations to sell cupcakes. Philly has a similar truck (you can read about it in my post from 6/13), but I like the New York one better, because their cakes are easier to eat standing up than Philly’s are. I read on Twitter that the cupcake truck was supposed to be in SoHo on Saturday, and when I asked at the window (you knew I was going to go for a cupcake!) why the truck was on the Upper East Side, the guy replied that they have two trucks now.

After eating my Nutella fudge cupcake, I went into the Frick, which is on 70th. The museum holds the collection of Henry Clay Frick, one of the robber barons who made a fortune in coke in the late 19th century. In his will, Frick stipulated that his mansion be opened to the public as a museum, and in in 1935, after he and his wife died, the museum opened. I enjoyed the fact that the museum’s building is itself artistically/architecturally significant; the Frick had fireplaces, wood paneling, books in the library, and a large indoor courtyard with a fountain that made the museum seem much more comfortable and less institutional than other museums with big galleries like the Met or Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Some of the rooms in the museum, like the huge West Gallery, were designed with the intention of becoming museum galleries, and the the library only had shelves up to waist-height so that pictures could hang above them. I only had about 2.5 hours to spend in the museum, but I got to see everything (even though I was a bit rushed near the end) and listened to most of the audio tour. Most of the paintings were from the late 18th and 19th centuries, and I hadn’t heard of many of the artists. I did see one Degas, a few Vermeers and Rembrandts, and a Monet, though. In addition, the collection included about a dozen of the medieval religious paintings that I like. Most surprising, though, was seeing “The Wool Winder” by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, which was used on the cover of a children’s book that I enjoyed when I was in elementary school.

After the museum, I walked down to the N stop and passed a street–I think 60th ish–with street vendors selling gyros, tacos, etc. Definitely not something I would expect a couple of blocks from the Plaza, but so it goes. I took the N down to 50th and walked (slowly–it was over 90 degrees out and humid by this time) to the Longacre Theater on W. 48th. I arrived at about 1:40 (the doors opened at 2 for a 2:30 curtain), but I just decided to hang out in the air conditioned lobby (decorated with pink chandeliers to compliment the disco balls and purple lights outside) instead of walking about, because I knew that if I did that, I would have to stand outside in line waiting for the doors to open. I encountered many a confused senior citizen who thought that the show started at 2 while waiting, and I found out that Kelsey Grammer, who plays Georges, would not be in the afternoon’s performance and that his understudy would take his part. I was very disappointed by this, but I was just excited to see the show.

The doors finally opened, and I went in to find my seat. Then the overture started (played by musicians in boxes above the stage instead of an orchestra pit). The show was brilliant and full of sparkles, flying wigs, and beautiful music. Grammer’s understudy was actually very good. I’ve heard Grammer sing, and he can carry a tune but doesn’t have a very strong voice, but his understudy very definitely was a trained singer, and after I heard him, I was less disappointed about not seeing Frasier Crane onstage. The actor who won the Tony this year for the role of Albin was still in the show, and I was very impressed with his performance; he was very over-the-top as a crying, screaming, and giggling diva. And at the end of the first act, when Georges told him that he wouldn’t be able to meet Jean-Michele’s fiance and parents and Albin stormed onstage at the club to sing “I Am What I Am,” I think my heart skipped a beat. My dance coach and I have talked about thinking of Broadway to help with my presentation on compulsory dances, and I think that I really need to channel La Cage into my Viennese Waltz.

The show ended at about 5:15, and I walked to catch the 1 uptown to 125th (and while on the train broke the MTA/Seinfeld code of silence to ask in what year a guy wearing a t-shirt from the school from which I transferred in Philly graduated), because I wanted to do some neighborhood-exploring in Harlem. I have read about gentrification in Harlem this year, and on my accidental visit to 125th and Morningside in my sophomore year, I was surprised to see new stores going in. I didn’t have much time to explore on this visit, because I wanted to get to the Upper West Side before I had to go back to Penn Station, but I was able to spend about half an hour walking down 125th/Martin Luther King Boulevard. The businesses in the blocks of the street down which I walked have largely not been touched (at least, not obviously touched) by gentrification. I saw landromats, cheap takeout Chinese and fried chicken restaurants, a McDonald’s, a couple of drug stores, and a storefront Pentecostal church. I also walked by the General Grant high-rise housing projects, which are across the street from one of the few stores that I could identify as being a recent addition to the neighborhood: an upscale grocery store with exposed brick side walls and chocolate-covered strawberries for $3 each. And while most of the people I saw walking around on 125th were black or Hispanic, I saw about a dozen white people waiting for the subway uptown and downtown, which makes me wonder if, as in Mt. Airy in Philly, the business street I walked down mostly draws minority clientele but more white people live on the residential side streets–a question to explore on another visit.

When I decided that I really needed to get back to the subway (which, as it happens, is elevated starting at 125th), I found that MTA was doing repairs on the downtown platform, so I had to take the 1 north to 137th and then cross and take the train downtown. Unfortunately, the subway car I took north didn’t have air conditioning. Fortunately, though, I only had to ride one stop, and it was the only un-air conditioned car I encountered all day.

I got off at Lincoln Center and walked toward 66th and Columbus for . . . the Magnolia Bakery. I discovered the bakery when I went to see “Aida” at the Met in October and enjoyed it, and this was my first time returning since that visit. And I realize now that I use the word “discover” very loosely–when I went in October, people asked me if I visited before I had a chance to tell them, and people in Philly know about the bakery as well (I think it was featured on a television show, but I’m not sure). Anyway, after going to Magnolia and finding a very tiny sandwich shop on Columbus to gobble a sandwich, I jumped back on the 1 and rode to Penn Station to catch my train back down to the Illadelph.

I returned to Harrisburg last Wednesday for an internship-related activity. Again, I don’t want to put too much in public, but unlike my visit to Harrisburg last month, this time I got to see the capitol. It is beautiful, and the ceilings on the dome are especially ornate:

This post is about a week late; I was out and about on Tuesday (back to the rink in the evening), Wednesday (dinner in NoLibs), Thursday (reception), and Friday (another dinner out) of last week, so I didn’t really have time to write. Anyway, last Friday (7/16), I went to a farewell luncheon for one of the people who works in my office at Maggiano’s Little Italy, which is a chain, but I had never been there before. The distinguishing feature was that the meals are served family-style and involve many leftovers. In the evening, I went back into the city after work and brought my LSAT book to Capogiro to do some games practice for a pleasant evening.

On Saturday, I checked off a couple of neighborhood-exploring goals off my list. I first went to Callowhill, which is north and slightly west of Chinatown and is home to many warehouses and old factories, quite a few (but certainly not all) of which have been converted into upscale loft apartments. In addition, an abandoned railroad viaduct runs through the neighborhood, and a group has organized in Philly to try to turn it into a park, similarly to the High Line in New York. (After visiting the High Line last year, I can safely say that I am very much in favor of turning the viaduct into a similar park in Philly.) I remembered walking through that neighborhood once last year but didn’t really spend much time there. However, I did discover Cafe Lift, one of the only businesses I saw, so on Sunday I decided to give it a try, and I’m glad I did; I had a spectacular brunch.

I also, upon suggestion yesterday by one of my former professors, toured the Masonic Grand Lodge and Temple across the street from City Hall. The Masonic Temple was . . . something else. I didn’t know much about the Masons and still don’t (I think the tour guide assumed a lot of previous knowledge), but all of the rooms were really garishly decorated in different styles, such as ancient Egyptian and Medieval. When I asked a Mason on the tour next to me what they do in meetings and whether it’s all rituals or if they usually just sit around and talk about baseball, he said they sometimes do rituals but usually talk about community service projects they’re planning. And he said that the rituals are just really fun. I just nodded and smiled. After the Masonic Temple, I took the MFL to the Northern Liberties to walk around and to visit a couple of the places where I had seen pictures taken on various photo blogs I followed this year.

On Sunday, I got up and took the train into the city to visit the Rodin Museum, which is part of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but is a few blocks down the Parkway from the main building and Perelman, and only houses sculptures by Rodin. I had been once last year, but I went after a long visit to the main museum, so I remember being in a post-museum fog and just wandering through the Rodin. This time, I was of course more focused, and saw all of the sculptures. Honestly, I usually prefer looking at paintings, but the museum did have a sculpture of a man named Belzac that was satirized heavily after it was sculpted–the sculpture was described as looking like a snowman, and the museum’s collection included a sculpture of a seal that was sold as a souvenir satirizing the Belzac sculpture–that I rather enjoyed.

I probably walked 3-4 miles in 90+ heat and humidity on Sunday—after the museum, I took the Broad Street Line down to Snyder to explore the Passyunk neighborhood, about which I had read in the New York Times. According to the NYT, the area was becoming more gentrified and hipster-fied, but the small part I saw was still very much working-class Italian-American (and I didn’t see any hipsters); I walked by a diner and sloppy nail and hair salons, liqour stores, and laundromats.

I only spent maybe 20-30 minutes in Passyunk and then hopped back on the BSL two stops north to Ellsworth, because I wanted to get to the Point Breeze concert garden for the jazz that is supposed to happen every third Sunday of the month. I had read about this jazz event on uwishunu in May, but this was my first time going to the event, which was supposed to run from 1-5 pm. I walked down Ellsworth from Broad St. to 21st (7 blocks), so I got to see a bit of the neighborhood (mostly row houses but also a community pool, which looked wonderful on such a hot day), but when I arrived at the concert garden, it was empty and the gates were locked! I saw a couple of people coming out of the church across the street and asked them, and they were as surprised as I was that there was not jazz that day. I was disappointed, but happy that I got to see another neighborhood. Instead of hiking back to Broad to take the subway, though, I decided to walk back up to Center City.

Ellsworth is a couple of blocks south of Washington Ave., which separates Point Breeze (a mostly lower income African-American neighborhood, but in the northern part of the neighborhood, where I was, some row houses are starting to be refurbished) from the gentrified Fitler Square/Graduate Hospital area (where I was for Odunde in June). I was really surprised at how much of a contrast exists between the streets just south of Washington and the streets just north. As I mentioned, the streets just south are starting to gentrify. Washington around 21st St. has mostly warehouses and box stores–I saw an Auto Zone as well as a tile supplier and a large appliance store, and when I crossed Washington, the row houses were painted and updated, trees appreared on the sidewalks, and white yuppies rode bicycles and walked their dogs.

I finally made it back into Rittenhouse (even more of a contrast from Passyunk and Point Breeze), exhausted, and did a little bit of reading and then took the train back out to my apartment.

Another post about my weekend activities is coming (I have after-work activities planned for the rest of this week and had one this evening, so I’m not sure exactly when that post will be, but anyway . . .). In the meantime, I read this this morning on the train and loved it. The writer has a list of goals for her remaining time in New York–just like I did last summer in Philly and am doing again this year:

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/new-york-sendoff-love-at-first-sight

“But now that I’m about to move, I suddenly realize how much there is in New York that every New Yorker should do that I haven’t yet done. Things I always meant to do but hadn’t gotten around to, because I figured they’d always be here. Things I love that I want to do again, once more before I go. If not now, when?

And so for the next half-dozen weeks, that’s what I’ll be doing.”

On Sunday, I went to Aston to test the Westminster and Viennese Waltzes. I skated West pretty well for me–just like in practice. I passed that dance, but Viennese didn’t go quite as well as I unfortunately didn’t pass. I had a great time skating, of course, but I also very much enjoyed the fact that I was able to test in Philly again.

After I tested, I took the train into Philly and read in Rittenhouse Square. When I was living here, I took my homework into the city a few times to read, and last summer I spent many a happy afternoon reading in Rittenhouse. I think if I were still living here during school years, I would definitely make a point to do more studying/homework in Rittenhouse when the weather permits.