The interview was due to run in the Metro but never did. With a year passed and its hook gone, I run it here for all you grammar geeks because there just might be interest in hearing the thoughts of someone who told me: “I also love the semicolon, but that’s just my personal preference.”

Find what I submitted below.

The 125th annual convention of the Modern Language Association [came] to the Pennsylvania Convention Center from Dec. 27 to 30 [2009]. Metro speaks to Rosemary Feal, the executive director of the 30,000-member association for scholars of language and literature.

What can we expect out of an MLA conference?
A lot of professors speaking about literature, psalm, poems, TV shows and all the things that our professors teach in class.  We have sessions on the literary history of Philadelphia, sessions on the future of education. We’ll also have film showings and authors reading from their work. You can also expect eight or 9,000 of us invading all the the wonderful restaurants in Philadelphia.

Why have the MLA conference in Philly?
We ask for bids, but we’re a very big convention, so we need a convention center and the hotels that can support us. Philadelphia is one of those cities that can do it. In the past decade, we’ve been there three times. It’s located right on the northeast corridor, by New York and D.C. Plus, people like to bring their families along, and Philadelphia offers great culture. Everybody finds the city easy to get around, exciting, safe, fascinating, and near to enough of our members that people can come from a lot of nearby cities.

What are you most excited about?
I’m most excited about the convention’s focus on translation. Maybe it doesn’t excite you, but it excites me. Think of all the stuff you read from other languages. You can only do that because of the work from bright people everywhere. We’re bringing in experts from around the world to talk about that impact. That’s exciting to me.

Anyone who has done an academic paper knows MLA works cited style. What do you like most about MLA over competitor Chicago style?
MLA style uses parenthetical references, and I love parenthetical references. If I’m quoting the Declaration of Independence, I don’t have to use footnotes. No footnotes. Parentheses are the way to go.

More than a year ago, I handled a half dozen interviews and a couple rewrites on a story for the Inquirer that covered what Philadelphia workplaces will look like in the future. As is sometimes the case, it never found its home in print.

The story’s primary timeliness has been lost, but I think it still has merit. So, with permission from my editor, I share it below, in addition to a slew of extras from the heavy lifting of reporting.

It was meant to be a localized version of a Time magazine cover story that caught my attention.

Below, read the story, see portions of my interviews that didn’t make it into the piece and watch some related video news pieces

*Please note that the facts, figures, quotations and assertions are fact-checked and correct as of June 2009.

THE FUTURE OF THE PHILADELPHIA WORK PLACE

Not that long ago, there was something of a stable existence in retail.

Sheldon Abba

Sheldon Abba worked in a variety of clothing stores, from independent storefronts to big players like Urban Outfitters. He had a marketing and design background and, he thought, a fairly good sense of his future.

And then the bottom fell out.

With the economy on the slide, he was let go from Walnut Street-retailer Stussy in February, and his perception of that future changed.

“When I was in school, I thought I’d get a steady job with a brand and get a regular paycheck,” Abba, 23, said. “When that job evaporated, I started thinking differently. Maybe I could pay bills doing something like it on my own.”

So, with a handful of friends, he launched S. Industries, an ethereal design and retail company that is based wherever Abba and his cohorts are at the moment. He’s finding steady work through word of mouth but will soon take the venture on the Web through an e-commerce site. It’s a far ride from clocking in as a retail day manager.

The U.S. recession has changed lots of plans, like Abba’s. While entrepreneurs, freelancers and telecommuters have long been part of the U.S. workforce, today’s economic climate seems to have put more people in those roles than in recent memory. So much so that some say independent, remote ventures like Abba’s S. Industries are part of a trend for the future of the nation’s workplace.

That trend may fast become a norm in Philadelphia and across the country in the next five years or more, said Thomas Malone, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology management professor and author of the 2004 book, The Future of Work. Those who do stick to cubicle life may find their offices becoming smaller, closer to home, more mobile and, believe it or not, more fun in coming years, other experts say — all thanks to advances in communication technologies and increasingly casual work environments.

“The key message here is that I think we are in the early stages of an increase in human freedom in work, and it just might be as important a change for business as democracy was for government,” Malone said.

Some worry that the expected continued decline in traditional office employees could leave the new worker short on camaraderie and political social skills.

To curb his isolation, though, Abba has launched his venture with friends. They hold their meetings in bedrooms with a computer and a hard drive, listening to music and laughing.

“That’s a different work environment than any work place,” Abba says. “What I’m doing — finding work and making a schedule — is really valuable learning.”

For those who work from home for established companies, there’s another trend in keeping the best of the office: co-working.

For more than four years, Lori Hylan-Cho worked for software companies in California from 2,800 miles away in her Logan Square home near the Philadelphia Art Museum. The software developer and mom, whose hair is not unknown to be dyed purple on occasion, relished the flexibility but lamented the solitude.

“I was going a little nutty,” she said.

So, after making “a New Year’s resolution to get out of the house,” Hylan-Cho rented out space at Independents Hall, a shared office in Old City that rents workplaces to self-employed or other independent workers.

“In the coming years, the place becomes less important than the tools, and managers become more comfortable with distribution,” said Alex Hillman, a freelance Web developer who in 2006 opened Indy Hall with University of the Arts professor Geoff DiMassi. “Companies that want to stay ahead of the curve — if they’re open-minded — will need to explore these options in the traditional worker-employer relationship.”

Hylan-Cho, 40, has worked in software development for 11 years and has watched more and more of her co-workers flee the office.

“Working from home let me put in a load of laundry, be home for packages and sometimes meet the kids for lunch,” she said. She kept in touch with work by way of regular video conferences and instant messaging, connecting with co-workers from California to Texas back to Philadelphia.

That extra freedom kept her loyal, one of the more valuable assets of an employee in the future.

“Businesses are quickly finding that one of the most expensive costs of business is turnover,” said Deanna Geddes, an assistant professor of human resource management at Temple University’s Fox School of Business. So, the Center City office of the future may increasingly be a more inviting place.

Geddes says we might see the rise of the campus workplace for those who, unlike Abba and Hylan-Cho, do stay in the office.

“What successful businesses like Google learned before a lot of others is that people like to hang out, where they can develop friends, and when you have friendships in the workplace, people want to stay,” she said. “The casual campus environment that is more open, with fewer doors and walls, more communal space, games and less restrictive hours, lets people come and go as they please and keeps them invested in the workplace.”

For those who have already left traditional work environments, voluntarily or because of a tightened economy, the recession seems to point work places in a new direction.

“It takes a special kind of person, someone who can separate time and get work done,” Abba said. “That isn’t everyone, but clearly even the old-style offices of the past are going to change.”

-30-

Professor Thomas Malone, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• “We’ll see the economic benefits of very large business, as the same time as the human benefit of very small organizations, the freedom and creativity.”
• “The reason, of course, is a completely new generation of technologies that are reducing the cost of communication to such a low level. A huge number of people can now make sensible decisions for themselves with access to enough information because of the Internet, instead of just following orders.
• “We’ll see more human freedom, more people making more decisions for themselves. We may see more small organizations, where you’re your own boss.”
• A lot of lessons about that future can be taken from the nation’s largest private employer and an online auction behemoth, Malone said. Increasingly, we won’t need or always be able to find a company to employ us.
  “The clerk in Walmart and that seller for eBay represent the difference in what is now and what may come: in how they work, in responsibilities and where and when they have to do them,” Malone said. “Seven hundred thousand people say they make their primary or secondary living on eBay. They are essentially independent store owners with a huge amount of freedom in what they do, what to sell and what prices to set. That’s the future.”
• “Even inside big companies, we’ll see more freedom inside the company, more command and control to coordinate and cultivate. In another meaning of freedom, there will be more choice of when or where they work, with telecommuting for example, we’ll see a decentralization of the workplace. Both of those results are enabled by cheap communication….
• One reason cities grew the way they did was that for many occupations you had to live in a city, near the office to the company you worked for. One of the important trends changed by cheap communication technology is that more and more kinds of work can be done essentially anywhere in the world. What that means, I think, is that people will choose where they live often for reasons other than where their company is because it won’t matter. What that means is the dynamics of cities, i think will change. There are a lot of nice things about living in cities other than just going to work there. So, some people will continue to want to work in cities even though their jobs don’t require them to do so. It’s hard to know what the net impact on a city like Philadelphia will be, but I expect the population of cities may lessen but that the quality of living will go up.
• “The key point is electronic communication is reducing the need to travel to work everyday. You can work at home or near home much of the time. Ten years ago, we used to think that more and more people would become telecommuters. I think that’s not nearly so black and white now. The vast majority of professionals will be telecommuters in the sense that they work some of the time from home or while traveling and surely the professionals who spend all the time working from the office are a minority, but we’ll see a hybrid of office and telecommuting time.
• “If you need an example of a future employee, look at an eBay seller. If those 700,000 people were employees, it would make eBay the second-largest private employer in the country, second only behind Walmart. Of course, they are not employees… That’s all the freedom of any small store owner. It’s on a scale unlike ever before, in any regional or global marketplace. It’s as if an auction company built a retailer — not eBay the company, but eBay the community.
• “In cities, there is a pretty strong division between business and residential neighborhoods. Maybe we’ll see more of a blurring of these distinctions,” Malone, the MIT professor, said. “I think when people don’t have to drive or commute all the way to a downtown of a city, that means they could stay at home. We’ll see more of something I call a neighborhood office building.”It would be a place, Malone said, where telecommuters and freelancers, whose numbers are expected to rise, can work together. It’s a trend called co-working that already has strong roots in Philadelphia.
• ; residential neighborhoods with one or two or more office floors

Professor, Deanna Geddes, human resource management at Temple’s Fox School of Business

• This is a time to play to our strengths as a region. research and biotech, biomedic
• Companies without the sophisticated IT for corporate to retain employees may suffer.
• We might see more choice, allowing younger people to come in at 10 a.m. and work through 8 or stay on to 9.
• Center City could become the place for more campus-orientated workplaces. It’s cheaper to build out of the existing city.
• Taking a mantra from education in 1990s, clicks not bricks. We don’t need all the institutions.
• Work flexibility will be key.
• More and more employees are looking for flexibility. work-life issues and boredom go even further.
• There’s nothing more valuable than a good idea.
• More people want a job that first their lifestyle,  not just someplace to punch a time card.”
• “There will always be a place for corporate headquarters. They may change, get smaller and more casual, but they won’t go away entirely.”
• “There will always be a place for the cubicle jungle,” Geddes, the Temple professor, said. “But we won’t go as much and might not have to travel as far.”

Web designer Alex Hillman, co-founder of Independents Hall

• “What happens when a company is based outside the city, and the employee lives outside the city, but they come to the city to work in a physical space, like a coffee shop or sitting in a park using Wi Fi?” Place starts to breakdown.
• “The risk is low, as it’s a fairly cheap big city. There are a lot of industries and for so long Philly has just been a good place to try new things. It’s in our city’s history.”
• “With some trust for telecommuting or greater freedom and be valuable to the long-term relationship.
• “People react to distractions differently, but ultimately being completely isolated can’t be healthy,” said Hillman. “A combination of factors affect the distribution of the workplace.”
• In 2006, Alex Hillman, a freelance Web developer who caught cabin fever from too many lonely work sessions at home, and Geoff DiMassi, a University of the Arts professor, opened Indy Hall.
• See Technically Philly coverage of Alex Hillman.

Software engineer Lori Hylan-Cho, telecommuter and Indy Hall member

• 
• “Ditching the commute is a big thing. It’s not just that you’re stuck in traffic or on a train, but you’re not with a family. could productive worrk time, but not family time.”
• It was awesome. But it puts a strain on communication. You have to be a very active communicator. You have to make sure you’re around.”
• “I’m used to working with a lot of men, certainly in technical positions,” she said.
• The worst recession in a generation or more has brought on a slew of attention to the future of business and our friendly workplace confines. In the view of some experts, the Web-literate telecommuter is a sign of things to come.
• It’s invaluable for life balance, as you have kids, your job can be more portable giving you a chance to be with your family.”
• “It was a great way to have a job that I love and live where I want to live,” Hylan-Cho, 40, said.
• So, if Hylan-Cho lands another gig that brings her to an office, she might meet with colleagues there for regular meetings, if not traditional full days. Still, she said it’ll be hard to give up the flexibility she’s had for the past few years.
• But, she now no longer telecommutes for that California company. In fact, she says she might look for another chance at the collaboration of a traditional office.
• “I don’t know if it’s the future,” Hylan-Cho said. “But it’s worked well for me.”

Helpful U.S. Census Bureau of Labor Statistics information for Philadelphia employment:

• BLS Mid-Atlantic Information Office
• Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH), 2008-09 Edition
• Employment Projections
• Regional Employment and Unemployment News
• Regional Employment Statistical Data
• Pennsylvania County Employment and Wages presser

My travel mate Sean Blanda (left), Zurich, Switzerland couch surfing host Dule Misevic, and myself in November 2008.

A full-length travel story of mine focused on the five year anniversary of CouchSurfing.com at first destined for the Philadelphia Inquirer last January never found a home there. After a back and forth, I went another direction and it got a tad stale for the daily’s travel editor.

So, because I’ve shared other stories that didn’t run as planned, I’ll do so today. Additionally, as always, I also like to share some grafs that were reworked and items I cut from my original story, which also can be seen below.

ZüRICH, SWITZERLAND — I just can’t find chopped beef for cheesesteaks anywhere. But cheese? Well I have my choice of cheeses in the largest city of this European country known for its favorite holey dairy product.

I snag a jalapeno-laced Swiss cheese and settle for a pound of ground beef I plan to mince. After picking up fresh rolls, peppers and onions, I am back climbing hilly Kornhausstrase, a busy road northwest of the city center that rides over the Linth River to Zurich’s residential neighborhoods. As a jet-setting tourist, this is a part of Zürich you would never see. Unless, of course, you are couch surfing, which is why I am here.

CouchSurfing.com, the online hospitality-exchange giant, is celebrating six years this month and has nearly 1.6 million members, but it hasn’t lost its mission. For five weeks in fall 2008, I made something new of the tired European backpacking trip by hopping from one stranger’s couch to another, not for money, but in the name of cultural exchange. I never had a better experience than my first, sleeping on a tan couch in the leafy northern extreme of Zürich, Switzerland.

The sky is gray, cloudy and intimidating, and cars and bicycles whiz past me as I march determinedly, groceries in tow, hoping to get to my host Dule’s big, modern, first-floor apartment before he gets home from work. It’s my second day and nearly my third night in Zürich, but it didn’t take more than 15 minutes for me to decide that Dule deserved a particular thank you.

He isn’t an itinerant wanderer, nor an existentialist looking for meaning or a creep looking for a victim, so perhaps he isn’t who you think is willing to let a stranger crash on his couch. Dule is a Serbian-born, 30-something academic with a Ph.D. from Michigan State and a research job in Zürich. As couch surfing matures, so too, do many of its members.

There isn’t even an implicit agreement to do something in thanks for your couch-surfing host, nor is a host required to offer anything more than a place to sleep – the floor, an extra bed, a bathtub, maybe even a couch. But a funny thing happens when you put your trust in a stranger; you tend to bond awfully quickly. You want to find a way to say thanks.

So was the case with Dule and me. The day before, he found me and my two traveling buddies at our arranged meeting spot, under the blue angel that hangs from the city’s central train station. I told him to look for my Phillies hat, deciding not to describe the haggard appeal that my friends and I had acquired after nearly a month slumming around Europe.

Dule arrived wearing glasses, a smart khaki suit jacket and blue jeans. He offered a warm, if hesitant smile, and snagged one of our bags before leading us to his home. So began my first couch surfing experience and the best, most complete three days anyone could ever have in Zürich.

A founding principle of couch surfing is cultural sharing. So when my friends and I decided we wanted to thank Dule with something more tangible than words, we knew it should be something from the rich culture of Philadelphia – a city we compared and contrasted and raved about to whomever would listen during our trip. During our time in Zürich, Dule was a frequent victim of my Phila-babble, so what better gift than the king of Philly cliché, a founding father of our city’s tasty treats?

I got plenty in return for those cheesesteaks I made. After introducing my friends and me to Zurich’s tram system – when you have to buy a ticket and when you don’t – Dule gave us a breezy outline of the city’s sights. All the tourists go to Landesmuseum, the Swiss National Museum, he said, but it’s dusty, boring and overpriced. Swiss culture is influenced a lot by Germany, but no visitors seem to make it to Zurich’s best bratwurst stand on Theaterstrasse near Schoeckstrasse – where all the locals go and the brown mustard is even spicier than in Philadelphia.

Dule has has hosted more than 100 people since he joined CouchSurfing.com in 2006, so he knows where to point wanderers like myself.

On my first night in Zurich, Dule shared some of his favorite haunts. I screamed with dozens of locals in support of a penalty kick that won a match for the Swiss national soccer team, while sucking down a beer brewed in the city. He talked about walking into traffic at crosswalks – unlike in the States, cars would stop here, he said. I got pushed around in a game of pool I wasn’t prepared to be in, and Dule got me out of paying the money I hadn’t realized I was gambling.

A BBC couch surfing report from fall 2008

Casual knowledge to this local was priceless insight to me, so I quickly fell in love with what couch surfing can mean for your tried and true backpacking trip.

“I can’t help but think,” I told Dule on my first night in Zurich, “that couch surfing is going to be good for me.”

“I know,” Dule said with a giggle. “A hotel won’t seem the same ever again.”

Even the cheapest hostels in Zurich run more than $30 per night, which means Dule saved the three of us close to $300. That total, of course, doesn’t include the tour he didn’t have to give, the thoughts on Swiss culture he didn’t have to share, and the proper fondue party to which he didn’t have to invite us. Of course, in this expensive city, a chunk of those savings went to our big cheeseteak meal, but that’s something important to understand. Couch surfing shouldn’t be thought singularly as a way to save cash, but rather a way to make better use of your money. I’d rather spend my funds on making and sharing a Philadelphia delicacy than on bed linens. Hotels, even hostels, are an offer of a place to sleep, but couch surfing also offers a friend to make.

I now had a warm guide in a foreign land and a friend in Switzerland. Dule now had the same for Philadelphia.

Throughout my jet setting, couch surfing allowed me to learn more about a place than I ever could otherwise in the short few days I allotted for enormous cultural metropolises. As I said goodbye to Dule, he told me that I just might see him in Philadelphia for another cheesesteak.

My couch will be ready.

EXTRAS FROM THE STORY

• My Couchsurfing profile can be seen here
• My original breakout box lede:

The concept of bringing into the digital age the timeless idea of staying with and learning from locals was first conceived in 1999, when Casey Fenton wanted more than a tour book-experience of Iceland.

The New Hampshire native found an online directory of students of the University of Iceland and e-mailed some 1,500 of them asking if he could stay at their homes and get a local perspective on the Arctic country.

It worked, and Fenton resigned himself to couch surfing the rest of his traveling days. Four years later – after a hand in the dot com bubble – Fenton launched CouchSurfing.com and the site has thrived since, letting people of all kinds experience travel in a new way.

• I didn’t know what he looked like beyond a small, grainy photo from his Couch Surfing profile. So, I made at least three false starts, smiles and extended hands to the wrong stranger. He recognized my Phillies hat and my accompaniment – a college buddy and his brother, both looking as haggard as I was after a long day of travel from Lyon, France, via Strausbourg.
• We shook hands as if agreeing on a business deal. Then we were off to his neat apartment a short walk from the city’s center. And just like that, my couch surfing career and the best three-day tour anyone could ever have of Zurich, Switzerland began.
• On my last night in Zurich, like I would in Budapest, my host and I exchanged the most important element of culture: food. I bought the ingredients and made Swiss-modified cheesesteaks: local cheese and stripped beef on fresh rolls. Dule hosted a proper Swiss fondue party: bread in a garlic cheese and then fresh fruit dipped in melted Swiss chocolate.
• And that’s how cheesesteaks became appetizers for my first authentic fondue party.

Sex columnists seem to have something in common.

That was a thought that came to my mind last January, while talking at the beginning of 2009 to friend who wrote a sex column for his college newspaper. None of my existing freelance contacts seemed all that interested in the topic, so I went shopping for someone who was.

I found a buyer in a Web site for sexuality, but I was just developing my freelance career and not yet stern in my not-writing-for-free policy, so I agreed to finish a draft before agreeing to terms.

When it came in, my editor balked, the economy worsened, advertising declined and freelance budgets were continually slashed, and so the story has sat ever since. Today, I share it here: a profile of the mindset of someone who just might be a sex columnist.

What does a sex columnist look like?

Timaree Schmit went through 12 years of Catholic school and came out the other side a sex columnist.

Timaree Schmit

The 26-year-old graduate student at Widener University outside Philadelphia writes Sex with Timaree, a popular sex column featured weekly on the Barbershop Notebooks, a blog maintained by Temple University [now Columbia University] hip-hop professor and Fox News contributor Marc Lamont Hill. Schmit, raised in Western Nebraska, describes herself as liberal and sexually experienced, yet says her column often gives men the impression she’s more flippant about sexual encounters than she really is.

In other words, she just might be the prototype of a successful sex columnist, according to research by Dr. Pepper Schwartz, a sociology professor at the University of Washington, author of a host of related books including Everything You Know About Love and Sex is Wrong, and a former sex columnist for Glamour.

“You’d be amazed at the level of ignorance and the level of isolation out there,” Schwartz says. “Sex columnists serve a big role.”

But what does your friendly neighborhood sex columnist who is filling that role look like? Like many professions, it seems a certain set of characteristics are often shared by those drawn to the allure of writing about the most intimate details of their lives and others.

“It’s definitely important to understand who you’re getting information from,” Schwartz says. So why not put a mirror up to your favorite tawdry advice columnist?

Often, they’re liberal and personable and self-identify as being sexually experienced, like you might guess. But also, Schwartz says, their columns may be a vehicle to normalize their own taboo behaviors, yet they are likely a lot less confident than their writing may suggest.

Your average sex columnist was likely raised in a family that was either extremely sexually repressive or expressive, Schwartz says, and it also turns out that many are a lot less promiscuous or even adventurous than their writing may suggest.

“I don’t know one thing about sex,” says E. Jean Carroll, the venerable advice columnist for Elle whose content often gets intimate. “That’s the same for all columnists. We are not necessarily the people we seem to be in print.”

Carrol, whose column has run in Elle since 1993, is currently working on a book about college sex – “because it’s the juiciest time in the history of the world” – but along the way took an interest in campus sex columnists. Last year, Carroll mined the country’s best and posted their work on her Web site, AskEJean.com. She saw commonalities even among those aspiring for the craft.

“They are there to be stars,” says Carrol. “The young ones love to share their personal experiences, you know, like leaving their underwear at the fraternity house or waking up next to someone you can’t quite remember. It’s a social move, a way to get dates and get attention on a crowded campus.”

In many of their columns, Carrol agrees, there is a tendency to promote as common the sexual misadventures of their friends and themselves, a trend that may run through the heart of many writing in the form professionally.

“I know sex workers and kinksters and freaks,” says Dan Savage, who writes Savage Love, the syndicated column often heralded as the pantheon of sexual-advice today. “So, perhaps I subconsciously strive to normalize behaviors that others regard as taboo out of a devotion to my freaky friends.”

Below Savage speaks about the ‘strangest’ letters he’s received.

Savage, who is openly gay, is known for flying in the face of the religious right, like lambasting former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum for telling the Associated Press in April 2003 that he had “a problem with homosexual acts.”

Dan Savage

Santorum was born in the small city of Winchester, Virginia, seemingly a world away from Savage’s Seattle – a coastal urban metropolis like many sex columnists call home. Carrol lives in upstate New York and isn’t unaware of the big city beneath her. Though a native of Nebraska, Schmit says her friends were always liberal and now lives outside of and frequents Philadelphia.

Even Carrol’s college columnists from Midwest campuses were largely liberal and seemed to identify or aspire to big cities, Caroll says, particularly in the northeast and west coast but elsewhere as well.

Krystal Baugher, who wrote a column for the University Leader of Fort Hays State University, left Kansas for graduate school in Chicago. Carrie Pierce, who authored a column in The Maroon Weekly at Texas A&M University, said she has aspirations of a European metropolis in her future. Others had their eyes, unsurprisingly, on the glossy fashion magazines of New York City.

“There are those who say ‘I really like Sex in the City so I’m going to be Carrie Bradshaw and write like her’, which might be the bane of my existence,” Schmit, of Sex with Timaree, says with a laugh. She exemplifies well another standard sex-columnist trait, disarming intimate subject matter with humor.

“It’s definitely best that columnists be funny, so long as that they’re accurate,” Schmit says. “So most are.”

In a recent column, Schmit responded to a reader who wanted advice on dealing with a new girlfriend’s former lover who was still hanging around.

Schmit told her reader to first give it time.

“Things will be hilariously awkward for a bit, but they’ll settle down eventually,” Schmit wrote. “Kind of like the seconds following a queef.”

Voices range, but some sense of levity is perhaps the most common sex-columnist trait of all, perhaps the prime example being Savage.

In a recent column of his, a reader told Savage that Canadian sex counselor Sue Johanson said not to have anal sex because of potential health ramifications and then asked Savage what he would say.

Savage responded: “I would tell people to refrain from fucking Sue Johanson in the ass…”

Of course not everything is funny.

Like the subject matter they encounter, the more intimate suppositions Schwartz intimates about the average sex columnists are, of course, hard to broach and even harder to gauge, like family background.

Schwartz says many sex columnists might find their path by either rebelling against a strict childhood or incorporating one that allowed for sexual exploration.

“My parents were good liberal Catholics in the 70s, and they understood that good liberals were open about sex, were sexually liberal when it came to sex education — the willingness to talk about sex with their kids — but they were raised in very sexually repressed environments, and try as they might, they weren’t very good at creating a sexually liberal environment,” Savage says. “I guess it depends on what your definition of liberal is. My parents strongly felt that sex went with marriage and vice-versa.”

Schmit says she was raised by a “generally reasonable couple of professional educators” but admits to rebelling against her Catholic schooling. Aside from being “almost puppy-like in [her] extroversion,” Schmit says her childhood was otherwise very normal, another element Schwartz says is likely common among sex columnists.

Even with a “missionary purpose,” Schwartz says childhood abuses would make personal, particularly sexual, content uncomfortable.

“So I bet most sex columnists are more likely to have a more traditional childhood in that way,” Schwartz said.

Like those experiences, Elle columnist Carroll says many of her colleagues are often average in their writing, too.

“They just need to get their ideas across,” Caroll says. “I think it attracts people that want to be stars. It’s like watching American Idol during audition week. Sex columnists can be splashy. It’s a social move, so you probably won’t get Leo Tolstoy.”

You will get a curious cohort, though, Schwartz says. The sociology professor with expertise in sexuality is perhaps herself an example that the best in people who want to give advice on sex may be an interest to learn more. Even now as an academic, Schwartz serves as a sex columnist of sorts, writing online for Mens Health and serving as the relationship expert for perfectmatch.com, seeking questions and finding answers.

“Sex columnists, I think, are an interested bunch,” Schwartz says.

Much like Schmit, who first found she was more comfortable talking sex than others. That only made her want to study the scholarship of sex more. A psychology degree and nearly a doctorate in sexuality later, Schmit relishes being able to offer real research-based advice to people in the need of honest, forthright help.

“People need a reliable source, one whom they trust, because sexuality isn’t something people feel comfortable just asking anyone about. Even doctors, their training in sexuality is usually quite abysmal,” Schmit says. “It’s incredible to feel that I can offer something. It [is] changing the world in the way I was best suited to do.”

While Caroll agrees that many do tend to feel they’re doing a real service – “and many of them are right” – it’s important, Caroll says, not to over-complicate a portrayal of the average sex columnist.

“Remember: basically, you’re dealing with people who are show-offs,” Caroll says. “I think in the end, sex columnists just want to get laid.”

EXTRAS

Timaree Schmit

• “It’s definitely an attention-seeking behavior. You can write about anything but choose sex. You’re going to get attention for that, good or bad.”
• Psychology degree at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln
• Widener, the only nationally accredited graduate degree in sexuality
• She lives in Chester but frequents Philly.”Sex columnists, it’s a newish phenomenon in its current incarnation and is just now being fleshed out.”
• “It’s definitely best that they be funny, but definitely important that they’re accurate.”
• Schmitt, who gives a laugh after calling her column-style “edutainment”
• Sexual advice columns, Schmit says, often fall into one of two categories: the entertaining – “like Dan Savage” – or the straightforward – “like when you ask medical doctors why it’s red and seeping things, but the answer isn’t terribly interesting to read.”

College sex is one time in the history of the world when you can do whatyou want. I’m sorry I missed out…Most sex columnists, I say, just want to get a date,” Caroll says

Last month, the Devon Theater, a professional production house in a working-class neighborhood of Northeast Philadelphia, canceled the final half of its inaugural season due to state budget constraints.

In going through some documents of mine, I found, perhaps prophetically, a story that never was from back in March when the Devon first reopened. Originally planned for Philadelphia Weekly, its working slug title was ‘Can the Devon survive in Mayfair?’

Perhaps that hope now seems less likely. Below, I share the piece that didn’t run (for a variety of reasons) and some extras from the reporting.

Before writing this piece for PW, I covered the Devon’s reopening heavily, additionally for the Inquirer, NEastPhilly.com and uwishunu.

As originally written March 2009 and, boy, do I feel like my writing has grown some even in the ensuing months.

Kathleen Murray has already seen ‘Nunsense’ – years ago somewhere in Center City, she said.

But she’s not going to miss the chance to see one of the first live performances held at the resurrected Devon Theater.

So Murray, 76, bought tickets and also became a proud Devon volunteer. Last Saturday [3/14], she had orientation and looks forward serving as an usher, helping with ticketing or costumes or with the summer camp.

She’s an active theatergoer, supporting venues like the Arden and the Keswick, but says there is something special about the Devon being in Mayfair, her blue-collar Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood. That kind of support, Devon executives say, is just what they need to make professional theater work eight miles and a social class or two from Center City.

In Aug. 2004, the Mayfair Community Development Corporation, which has maintained ownership, bought the Devon for $800,000. The 65-year-old roof allowed severe water damage. There was termite-infestation, collapse and decay. As part of an expansive, $6 million plan to reshape the surrounding Frankford Avenue corridor, the CDC wanted to bring theater to the cavernous former adult movie playhouse.

There is little question that they have the attention to launch with a bang. The staying power of a modern, professional arts center in the heart of an Irish working class neighborhood in transition, though, is far less certain.

And in transition is certainly something Mayfair is in.

Mayfair was a new neighborhood in the 1930s, developing on farmland that surrounded older communities like Tacony and Holmesburg. Bounded by Roosevelt Boulevard, Pennypack Park and largely hugging Frankford Avenue, Mayfair, like much of the Northeast, is diversifying today, but still maintains its old working class Irish American roots.

“The Devon cannot exist and thrive feeding on Mayfair alone,” said Mike Lally, the theater’s general manager. “It’s going to start here, but it can’t end here.”

The marketing focus is 15 miles around, he said. They aim to be seen as a Philadelphia, not exclusively a Mayfair or even Northeast Philadelphia theater.

The $6 million cost is a heavy burden, but Lally said revenue from keeping the versatile Devon’s schedule full can help. The Devon can host weddings, community events and, McEnlee mentioned, fundraisers for nonprofits, schools and hero tributes for fallen police officers, firefighters and others. There’s also lease revenue from six storefronts.

For those six storefronts, the CDC has received more than 200 offers, Mayfair CDC Executive Director Brian Patrick King said. But they’ve only accepted two — one of which is Fuse Management, the theater’s production company.

“We want to be selective,” King said. “Because we can be.”

“This model exists across the country,” said Amy Pickering, who is assisting with the theater’s production element and educational outreach. That model includes community interaction, from two-week summer camps, art-gallery space and monthly Saturday reading sessions.

A few hundred people have offered to volunteer as ushers and ticket agents, said Michael Pickering, the Devon’s artistic director and Amy’s husband.

“They’ll even clean the toilets,”  he said. “Anything to be involved and make sure the Devon works.”

But will that neighborhood be enough, if it sustains at all?

“Theater companies have a great fear of leaving Center City because they don’t know if the audiences will follow,” said Karen DiLossi, the director of programs and services for the Theater Alliance of Philadelphia.

There are groups in neighborhoods beyond Center City that are succeeding at performance art though, DiLossi said. Walking Fish Theater is at the forefront of Fishtown’s resurgence, and Chestnut Hill has Stagecrafters Theater. Theatre Exile has opened offices at 13th and Reed streets and has plans for performances at those Bella Vista digs. Act II Playhouse has become a celebrated mainstay in Ambler since opening in 1998, DiLossi said.

“Still, it seems many are afraid to try it,” she said.

“This is professional theater in a community,” said Michael Pickering. “As opposed to just community theater. Our actors are professionals.”

They say their quality performances will put butts in the seats. They better hope so.

“We’re all in,” said King, the CDC director. “It can’t be anything but a win.”

If Murray, the neighborhood boster turned usher, is any example, the neighborhood will do all it can to assure that win.

“Will the Devon survive? I think it will. I certainly hope so. Once the word is out in the community, we can support this. It can pull from across the bridge in Jersey and farther still,” Murray said. “I know I’ll help anyway I can. I can’t see it fail.”

EXTRAS

• “It’s going to be arts, culture and Tony’s pies,” Stephen McEnlee of Fuse Management said of its proximity near the famed tomato pie joint.
• “That’s the only thing the CDC cares about with this project,” Brian Patrick King said. “We’re going to transform this stretch of Frankford Avenue. This block is going to be a model and serve as a gateway to Mayfair.”
• Pickering has had reservations for the March 28 opening for weeks, including one for 24 people from Bucks County.
• Pickerings, 50 and 29, now of Sicklerville, N.J. to work in Atlantic City, came on in January 2008. Met McEnlee in Discovery Church
• “We also have the most expensive curtain track in town,” Mike Lally said of what is dividing concessions from the seated audience in the compact theater.

Joe Mallamaci, owner Tony’s Place

• Three years ago, Tony’s expanded into a third storefront. “We have been waiting three years since for the Devon to open,” he said.
• “This will make people stay in the neighborhood rather than go downtown or to Jersey,” he said.
• Now Tony’s has three rooms. In 1980 bought an adjacent storefront and three years ago, after first hearing about plans to bring the Devon back, bought a third, and now can seat 210 people.
• “We rented the room out, but now we will be able to regularly fill all three stores. We’re trying to employ people again.”
• “My father Dominic and his brother Tony opened this restaurant 57 years ago in 1951. So we have lots of loyal customers. Many of them have left the neighborhood and they still keep coming back. But, they come to eat and they leave,” Mallamaci said. “The Devon will keep them here.”
• “As soon as we heard the Devon was bought by the CDC, we bought another store to accommodate the new customers we knew would come.”
• “Economically, when the economy went bad, we had to close it,” he said of the third room. “But with the buzz and the talk about the Devon, it’s going to make sense again.”
• “I believe in the people over there running it. It’s not just the plays but the graduations, the teacher conferences. I think it’s going to have great long term success.”

Earlier this summer, I did some reporting for sustainability publication Grid magazine about Dansko, a suburban-Philadelphia durable footwear company that specializes in clogs. Unfortunately I couldn’t finish the story for some personal reasons.

Still, you should see the final product by Natalie Hope McDonald on Page 10 here, and check out the whole mag, which is an interesting niche news startup in Philadelphia.

Below read some of the content that I didn’t get the chance to use.

Mandy Cabot, Dansko co-founder

• “We were  given an insanely large cash offer to sell to a large public company. We imagined what that would mean for Dansko: basically unlimited money for R&D and growth and employee opportunities as a mom and pop business. So we seriously entertained the idea. It was something most entrepreneurs would spend a lifetime waiting for.
• “We want to create opportunities for the next generation of folks who are stakeholders, and that ties into sustainability, so we started looking closely at our environmental footprint.”
• Sustainability was not part of our original mission.
• My mission and Peter’s are different. Peter is leaving the world better than he found it. That comes from his Danish heritage. Mine was more for our stakeholders, to be their favorite.
• “Part of the sustainability mission is our corporate sense of responsibility, not just to our employees or stakeholders but to the community.”
• “There’s noting more empowering than paying it forward.”
• “As Daria said, we always wanted to do the right thing. We wanted to get to the next model as a midsize company. We wanted to be our retailer’s favorite, our employees favorite and our vendor’s favorite.”
• We’ve never been driven by profit. If we were in it for the money, we would have sold. But we’re not. We’re gearing up for the next generation of Dansko employees and fans.
• We have some projects in R&D that, if I told you about,  I really would have to kill you.
• “I think that there’s a collective power that larger organizations have.”
• “The more we inspire our following, the greater their loyalty to Dansko, the greater that loyalty, the more permission or mandate we have to make yet better products and make yet better decisions.”
• “In our efforts to leave the world a better place, it sure starts with how we treat each other.”

Daria Payne, who was the building’s project coordinator

• “Being thoughtful and sustainable is in Peter’s DNA, even if he didn’t know the details.”
• “Three years after building the first, they found they had outgrown that building. So Peter approached me. And he said, ‘this is not going to be business as usual.’ It’s going to be a green building, though he didn’t know about the details of LEED. But he wasn’t going to have another over-engineered, energy waste of a building.”

Read this GreenLight profile on their new headquarters, and an Inquirer story on their vertical garden.

Below watch some Dankso customer testimonials.

At my desk in the newsroom of The Temple News after graduating and cleaned out May 21, 2008.

In April I wrote a piece to run in the commentary section of The Temple News but never ran it. My last column was an open letter to the university’s President Ann Weaver Hart. Since last week I shared video of my commencement address, on which this column focuses, I thought I would share the column that never was.

By Christopher Wink | April 18, 2008 | The Temple News (never ran)

I am your commencement speaker.

A committee of professors and administrators have decided that I am serviceable enough to represent my 4,000 fellow graduates on Temple University May 22 commencement ceremony. I will speak to you, our families and our friends, more than 8,000 people in the Liacouras Center.

But, I, too, have sat through graduation speeches of little note and boring memory. I want this to be yours as well.

So I welcome any and all ideas, suggestions and comments, particularly, but not only, from those who are graduating with me on May 22. I would love to hear any of your stories so that I might include them in the brief 5 minutes I have to address you all, your families and my own.

There comes a time in our lives at which we first feel the weight of our being. Traditions are meant to ease this burden by helping us understand who we are and where we are meant to go.

So as we finish another stage of education we are told middle class living dictates is necessary, a day of graduation, of speakers and caps and gowns should calm us.

We can take photos with family, crowding out into North Broad Street. I do not take lightly the opportunity to forever be the commencement speaker for Temple’s Class of 2008.

I take a great ownership in this university. I was among the first Temple volunteers to endeavor on service immersion trips to Tijuana, Mexico and Laredo, Texas and New Orleans and White River, South Dakota. I was in Sullivan Hall before President Ann Weaver Hart, Lincoln Financial Field before Al Golden and was wearing cherry and white before Fran Dunphy.

But with that must come humility. How difficult it is to grasp the history of this university. Temple students were servicing the world long before I was born. Sullivan Hall, and even the Linc, were envisioned before I even moved to Philadelphia, and Fran Dunphy has bled Big 5 basketball longer than he likely cares to admit.

These have been lessons in community for me. How old this university, this city, this world is, yet how often fresh ideas and fresh lives are welcomed. I get warm and gooey when I think about Temple and Philadelphia welcoming me – a fair student from a rural northwest corner of New Jersey.

As I have learned about community, I have learned of the true expansiveness of Temple and this urban play land in which for four years I have been allowed to bicycle through, and subway through, and bus through and slink warm and satisfied through.

But we do not live in postcards or pictures or fine Victorian paintings.

There is trash on your corner and a broken antenna trailing my car. We have survived a college existence that holds in it fundamental geographic differences than those of suburban, true, a great many urban, universities. It is impossible to ignore this. So I will not.

I hope your stories will help me remain balanced and true.

I have learned that speeches on graduation day are meant to remind you that on that day, everything changes. But it isn’t true. No one will leave here different. Because the changes have already come.

In a Center City cubicle, a bar on Chestnut, or a house on Carlisle Street. With your girlfriend on Buery Beach. In the first row of the student section at a men’s basketball game. At a party in McGonigle or at 1:30 a.m. on a Tuesday in the TECH Center. On the Broad Street Line or a narrow dormitory bed in Peabody Hall. Maybe even in a classroom.

I began college with less than complete focus. By my sophomore year, I learned enough to get B’s. By my junior year, I learned enough to get A’s. This year, I learned enough to know that I haven’t learned much at all.

Maybe the greatest gift Temple has ever given me, leaving aside the city of Philadelphia, is the knowledge that the universe is littered with what I do not know and will forever struggle to understand.

I hope you all learned something like that or your own lessons of importance while studying on North Broad Street. Write me, call me. Tell me what else I need to include.

See and read my speech and other related materials.

Vince Fumo is the funniest indicted state senator in the history of the Pennsylvania General Assembly.

To Philadelphians Fumo is tinged with corruption, his name only said amid seething recounts of his 139-count indictment looming in the fall. But in Harrisburg, his professional home since 1978, Fumo is still a force.

After a second heart attack in March and this round of indictments that came last year, Fumo announced he would not seek reelection in November and vacated his post as chairman of the Senate Appropriations committee, a powerful seat he held since 1984. Still, after each negotiating session of state leaders this budget season, it was Fumo who came out, sleeves rolled up, ready to speak to the press.

In what may be the final week of his legislative career, Fumo was loose and downright uppity.

At a recent press conference on electric deregulation, flanked by a host of Senate Democrats from across the state, it came as no surprise that Fumo took the show, as he has before.

He leaned against a podium with a list of the salaries paid to the CEOs of electric utility companies.

“Let’s see, $13 million, must have been a bad year,” Fumo deadpans, turning to a staff member, “Who is this guy? I don’t know him, any of them, they aren’t hanging out with me at 15th and Tasker.”

At the conference he said the impending loss of electricity rate caps was the real energy crisis in Pennsylvania, and green issues were just taking the focus away from profits made by utility companies.

“This is the issue. Not oil, ethanol. I don’t care about off-shore drilling,” Fumo says, arms waving, “I don’t care about the caribou in Alaska.”

A gaggle of reporters giggle and a group of lobbyists growl.

But on July 4, in an empty state Capitol awaiting the budget agreement that would come that night at 6 P.M., he said goodbye to the Senate floor that he made his pulpit for decades. The indicted legislator leaving under a cloud of corruption allegations received a standing ovation, a resolution commending his service, and hugs from fellow Senators and staffers.

“How does one talk about 30 years of phenomenal life experience?” Fumo says, “I will miss all of this terribly. I’ve loved it and I’ve hated it and I will miss it.”

He isn’t retiring. That much he has already said. He will finish his term out, which expires at the end of the year, but he won’t return to Harrisburg for the fall session, which is scheduled to begin a week after he is to be in court on federal corruption charges. His trial is set to begin Sept. 8.

“I will be devoting my efforts to my trial then,” Fumo said. “This is probably my last speech on the Senate floor.”

Fumo is accused of using taxpayer dollars – including state employees – to live a lifestyle of excess and then fighting an FBI investigation into his conduct. But, he has remained a force other politicians – among those fastest to abandon a sinking ship – have stood behind.

At the electric deregulation press conference he was flanked by a host of Senate Democrats from across the state. On July 3, Fumo stood with powerful House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dwight Evans, also from Philadelphia, and threatened to throw “atom bombs” at the city’s two proposed casinos if they didn’t agree to move their locations. A collection of the Philadelphia delegation asked for the two to help relocate the casino proposals.

“Things get done when they come together,” says state Sen. Hardy Williams, D-Philadelphia.

But Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Gib Armstrong, R-Lancaster, says “there are two Vinces.”

“There’s the profane, the boisterous, the gregarious, the larger-than-life Vince Fumo,” Armstrong says, “And there’s the Vince that is sensitive and reflective and caring.”

Reporters love the boisterous Fumo, who emerged from late-night budget negotiations on June 29. He was asked about the role fellow Philadelphia Democrat Gov. Rendell had in late night negotiations.

“What we all know is that he isn’t the easiest guy to get along with this late,” Fumo said. “Or when he’s tired.”

“Vince Fumo can be a very difficult and aggravating person,” Gov. Ed Rendell says, “But that is because he is protecting those most vulnerable citizens.”

“This is not the way he would have wanted to go,” Rendell says, “Or the way people who admired him wanted him to go.”

For his part, Fumo has called his lawyers “optimistic” and the charges against him “half-truths, lies and misrepresentations.”

“If I had taken a bribe or sold my office, I would have quit my office in shame,” Fumo says, “But that didn’t happen.”

Read an insightful Philadelphia magazine article on his broken relationship with powerful attorney Dick Sprague. See a complete review of Fumo’s public life by the Inquirer. Read a great review of the state budget process by WHYY that explains why Fumo – and Rep. Dwight Evans, D-Philly – are so influential.