Sunday's column -- about the plight of a Burlhome twin owner coping with three yaers' worth of blight after the owner next door died -- drew scads of comments, rants and raves online, in my inbox and voicemail. First, a couple corrections and clarifications. I mistyped when I wrote that the now-deceased owner of the blighted property at 7001 Oxford Avenue was the long-estranged cousin of his neighbor's mother, Mary Conrad. Joseph Parisi was actually Conrad's uncle -- "My favorite uncle," in fact, until a family schism four decades ago. And I may have been unclear in describing the new Licenses & Inspections approach to nuisance properties in otherwise stable neighborhoods. Yes, L&I is attacking broken/missing windows and doors with a vengeance and hot pink ... Continue reading →

A video has gone viral of a man putting a young boy in a washing machine at a Camden laundromat, then scrambling to find help after the machine automatically locks and turns on. A maintenance worker was able to shut the machine down before the boy was injured, but YouTube videos of footage from a surveillance camera at the Federal Laundromat, near 24th and Federal Streets, have attracted hundreds of thousands of views. In the video, titled “Epic Parenting Fail at a Laundromat” and posted last week, a man is seen horsing around with the toddler. He picks the boy up, places him inside the stainless steel washer, and closes the door, obviously unaware that it will lock automatically. The man panics when the machine ... Continue reading →

On a March morning in 2009, Tyree Bush fired a 9mm weapon at a man heading to a corner store in Overbrook to buy Pampers. The timid teenager was a lousy shot, striking the victim in the hand. Bush, a gentle loner with an IQ of 52, had no clue what he was doing except following orders from a menacing neighborhood drug dealer. For the next three years, state and local officials found themselves equally perplexed about how to punish, and release, an unlikely felon at a time of dwindling resources for the intellectually disabled. Nearly $500,000 was spent institutionalizing Bush, when a less costly residential facility was more appropriate. Were it not for the advocacy of Common Pleas Court Judge Benjamin Lerner and the ... Continue reading →

Sunday's column -- about the plight of a Burlhome twin owner coping with three yaers' worth of blight after the owner next door died -- drew scads of comments, rants and raves online, in my inbox and voicemail. First, a couple corrections and clarifications. I mistyped when I wrote that the now-deceased owner of the blighted property at 7001 Oxford Avenue was the long-estranged cousin of his neighbor's mother, Mary Conrad. Joseph Parisi was actually Conrad's uncle -- "My favorite uncle," in fact, until a family schism four decades ago. And I may have been unclear in describing the new Licenses & Inspections approach to nuisance properties in otherwise stable neighborhoods. Yes, L&I is attacking broken/missing windows and doors with a vengeance and hot pink ... Continue reading →

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So many parents and alumni of St. Denis Catholic School in Havertown supported merging with friendly CYO rival Annunciation B.V.M., the marriage should have gone off without a hitch. Instead, parishioners hoping to embrace the past and future in a name were told the regional school would honor the late Cardinal John Foley. The decision was, in their pastor’s words, “nonnegotiable.” Children voted on a mascot, only to have their choices (Cardinals, Falcons, or Phoenixes) rejected. Tuition at the new school will dip a bit for families with one child, but when mother of five Dorene VanLuvender asked why her bill had soared, she was told large families like hers were “a burden.” Nearly two dozen Bulldawg boosters met with me last week to decry ... Continue reading →