November 06, 2005
Philly Memories
So this is what I did all summer. I was a tour guide. And yes, most of the time I gave tours in a burial ground—a famous burial ground, but a burial ground, nonetheless (the word graveyard hadn't been coined yet). In this picture I am telling the story of Major David Salisbury Franks, the highest-ranking Jewish officer in Washington's army. He died of yellow fever in the plague of 1793, and a Christian friend picked his body up off a cart on its way to a mass grave and brought him to Christ's Church for a proper burial. Kind of ironic that a Jewish man who died with a tarnished reputation ends up buried near Ben Franklin in a Christian burial ground.
(Constitution Center in the background)
Ahh, Philly. I miss it. I think this was on the way back from NYC about 20 minutes before my air compressor went...in the heaviest rain of the whole summer, of course.
The place of many of my most interesting conversations of the summer.
I honestly can’t say that I ever got tired of seeing this everyday on the way to work. That and my favorite cheese steak venders, Parul and Subhani. I had never met any Pakistani guys before this summer. Wow. Those guys sure could make a great cheese steak.