By Christopher Wink | Oct. 30, 2007 | The Temple News Temple University has been built on the backs of the dead. It’s late October, and we think about the old, the hidden and the dead. Temple has its ghosts, indeed. TEMPLE BY GRAVES In the 1880s, Russell Conwell was laying the groundwork for what [...]

By Christopher Wink | March 1, 2008 She enrolled in St. Joseph’s that summer, her first time away from home. She didn’t grow up too far away – she went to Merion Mercy – but college is about the time, not necessarily the place, and so, for her, Sourin Hall could have just as well [...]

By Christopher Wink | Feb. 16, 2008 Mike came to me. The platform at City Hall station doesn’t afford much room to maneuver. Before I knew his name, I knew he was Puerto Rican and friendly, with a bag of CDs and dirt under fingernails that needed attention by anyone’s standards. After we formally introduced [...]

By Christopher Wink | June 15, 2007 She was named after the fourth month. Not for when she was born, but of a time of warmth and beginnings for her parents who thought both had now since died. Interestingly, it was her name’s temporal successor – a month that, among other things, signaled the annual [...]

By Christopher Wink | Feb. 13, 2008 She grew up in Kensington Irish Catholic, like so many subjects of stories like this. Too many kids. Too tiny a house, standing side by side with others that fell ill with the same afflictions. When she was young, she was like a Philly soft pretzel, she told [...]

By Christopher Wink | April 14, 2006 I choose my clothes carefully, more carefully than I normally tend to choose my clothes. I am dressed well. I am dressed well in black, all black from my freshly shined shoes to my belt to my neatly ironed shirt and cravat. By cravat I mean a length [...]

By Christopher Wink | Mar 18, 2007 | Newsweek submission I have an excessive devotion to my nationality. I like to think there is something distinctly American in that pride of being American. I have saved money and made friends all to answer my desperation to travel, desperate to learn and explore and represent this [...]

By Christopher Wink | May 23, 2006 It was January 16, 2006 that I was offered and I accepted an internship with the Philadelphia Inquirer. It was that very Monday that I accepted a position I hadn’t expected to get, a position with the city desk of a large, historical, urban daily. I think about the [...]

By Christopher Wink | Nov 13, 2006 | The ISRST Review [PDF] The American population gurgled over 300 million some time in October of 2006, and it never paused. A solid 67 percent of that population considers itself non-Hispanic white in racial makeup, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, meaning nearly 100 million Americans are responsible for [...]

By Christopher Wink | May 20, 2007 | NPR submission It is too rare what I have, two spectacularly loving parents who coincidentally love each other as well. Still, understanding that I also someday want to be a competent father with strong arms and too much advice, I particularly idolize my own father in a [...]