My writing – Page 14 – Christopher Wink

PW: International techno legend Josh Wink on Philly and his future

joshwink-pw

He’s an internationally-recognized DJ and techno producer with the same last name as me, but I never heard of Josh Wink.

Until, that is, a source from a completely unrelated story mentioned him. That led to a profile of Wink, who lives in Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties neighborhood, for Philadelphia Weekly.

For Philadelphians not of a certain age, he just might be the most famous resident of Northern Liberties you’ve never heard of. To those who were active on the city’s rock, rave and club scenes in the 1990s, Josh Wink is a deejaying visionary and techno legend.

Twenty years after his first album, Wink has released his When A Banana Was Just A Banana LP and embarked on another extended European tour. But he’s torn between the Philly he calls home and the continent that has catapulted him into another stratosphere on the international house music scene.

“I would love to live in Europe as I spend half my time there,” Wink said in an e-mail before leaving for engagements in Amsterdam, Vilnus, Lithuania and others — his tour dates can be found at www.mypsace.com/joshwink — but “there is something about Philly that most people understand that keeps us coming back.”

It can’t be the adulation he gets here. Read the rest here.

Go check out the story, comment and come back and see where the idea came from and other extras below.

Continue reading PW: International techno legend Josh Wink on Philly and his future

PW: Open source learning at Penn

The University of Pennsylvania’s place in the open-source learning movement of higher education is the focus of my story in yesterday’s Philadelphia Weekly.

I can’t find it online (seriously), but it sure did run. So go pick it up if you’re in Philly. If not, well, check below for what didn’t make it in!

You can also see how I covered Penn’s relationship with Academic Earth for Technically Philly.

Comment there, and then see what didn’t make it in.

Continue reading PW: Open source learning at Penn

Inquirer: Devon Theater reopens in Mayfair

Devon artistic director Michael Pickering oversees a rehearsal of "Nunsense," the inaugural show for the new theater. AMANDA CEGIELSKI / Staff Photographer

The Devon Theater‘s proud reopening on Frankford Avenue in Mayfair was detailed in yesterday’s Sunday Inquirer by theatre critic Howie Shapiro and me.

About 400 people, dressed for a gala, will take their seats Friday evening in what once was a dilapidated Frankford Avenue movie house. Three women in nun’s habits will pop up, administering parochial-school demands: Get rid of the gum! Flip off those cell phones!

The lights will dim, the loopy musical Nunsense will begin – and Northeast Philadelphia will have its first professional live-performance theater, in an area where many people (those in the Northeast included) may not expect to find one. Read the rest here.

Check out the genuinely interesting story, comment and then come back and see some extras below.

Continue reading Inquirer: Devon Theater reopens in Mayfair

Live, from the Northeast – it’s theater (Philadelphia Inquirer: 3/22/09)

Devon artistic director Michael Pickering oversees a rehearsal of “Nunsense,” the inaugural show for the new theater. AMANDA CEGIELSKI / Staff Photographer

By Howie Shapiro and Christopher Wink | Philadelphia Inquirer | March 22, 2009

About 400 people, dressed for a gala, will take their seats Friday evening in what once was a dilapidated Frankford Avenue movie house. Three women in nun’s habits will pop up, administering parochial-school demands: Get rid of the gum! Flip off those cell phones!

The lights will dim, the loopy musical Nunsense will begin – and Northeast Philadelphia will have its first professional live-performance theater, in an area where many people (those in the Northeast included) may not expect to find one.

The opening of the sparkling Devon Theater is an example both of neighborhood tenacity and of a professional Philadelphia theater community whose growth – against the economic odds – seems unstoppable.

“I welcome them to the theater community,” says Margie Salvante, executive director of the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia. “The theater industry, on a national level, is really focused on Philadelphia as a hot spot right now.”

Continue reading Live, from the Northeast – it’s theater (Philadelphia Inquirer: 3/22/09)

Live, from the Northeast – it's theater (Philadelphia Inquirer: 3/22/09)

Devon artistic director Michael Pickering oversees a rehearsal of “Nunsense,” the inaugural show for the new theater. AMANDA CEGIELSKI / Staff Photographer

By Howie Shapiro and Christopher Wink | Philadelphia Inquirer | March 22, 2009

Continue reading Live, from the Northeast – it's theater (Philadelphia Inquirer: 3/22/09)

PW: Did Philadelphia ambulance response time kill a woman?

In yesterday’s Philadelphia Weekly I shared the story of Vlad Glikman, who blames a failure in Philadelphia’s ambulatory system for the death of his mother.

Jan. 20, 2008: Glikman receives a frantic call from his 81-year-old father telling him that his mother, Adalina, is unconscious in their Somerton apartment in the Northeast. His father says a private ambulance company, Century, is on the way. Twenty minutes later, Glikman arrives at his parents’ home and finds his mother on the ground, still unconscious, with no ambulance in sight. His father calls Century again, but according to Glikman, the ambulance driver says he can’t get his engine started due to the blistering cold. Desperate to save his mother, Glikman dials 911. Fifteen minutes later—far too late by most national standards—a city-dispatched ambulance arrives just in time to pronounce her dead. Read the rest here.

While it focuses on Glikman, the story serves as an update from a May 2006 story by Mike Newall on Philadelphia’s poor ambulance response times.

Read the story, comment, then com on back, as always, and see what didn’t make it into the final story.

Continue reading PW: Did Philadelphia ambulance response time kill a woman?

Inquirer: Why are there so many aspiring librarians?

Susan Davis teaches a library-science class at Drexel, where enrollment in the program has grown more than threefold since 2000. Retirements are opening jobs for librarians. Photo by DAVID M WARREN.

I try to tackle the contrast between contracting libraries in Philadelphia and a surge in library-sciences programs at regional colleges in a story for today’s Style & Soul section of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

You might think librarians are going the way of card catalogs.

After all, many of Philadelphia’s Free Library branches are on the chopping block come summer, and the number of public school librarians have dropped by half in the past 15 years.Yet local colleges tell a different story.

At a time when free access to Internet, books, movies and lectures is more important than ever, libraries across the country — where many librarians are graying and retiring — are seeking skilled information specialists, trained and college-educated in the library sciences. Library science programs here are filling the need. Read the rest here.

Go there, check out the story, comment and then come back here for the extras that didn’t make it into the full story.

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Philacon Valley: The surging technology communities of Philadelphia, the Delaware Valley

The older streets of Philadelphia with the Center City-skyscraping Liberty Towers peering over.

Wipe clean the rust.

Philadelphia, Pa., the first great and longest-lasting great American city, which fell on long-hard, embarrassing times for much of the second-half of the 20th century, has every reason to take on the future of urban existence — innovation.

I’m using the opportunity to also introduce a new venture, Technically Philly, a blog covering the community of people using technology in Philadelphia.

And that community is growing. If it’s green development or technology, Philadelphia has a thriving underground version of it. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Philacon Valley.

Continue reading Philacon Valley: The surging technology communities of Philadelphia, the Delaware Valley

Phila. fine-arts scene goes where youth are (Philadelphia Inquirer: 2/24/09)

By Christopher Wink | Tue, Feb. 24, 2009 | Philadelphia Inquirer

inquirer-cover-2-24-09 On Valentine’s Day, Pennsylvania Ballet staff members stood in the Merriam Theater’s lobby handing out coasters that bore what might have seemed a strange suggestion coming from an arts organization: Go to our YouTube channel.

What the mostly graying matinee audience made of the invitation to an online video-sharing site is unclear. What is clear is that the Pennsylvania Ballet is not alone in lusting after online social-network users.

The Kimmel Center has a Flickr photostream. The Curtis Institute of Music is on LinkedIn. The Arden Theatre and the Franklin Institute use Twitter. The Philadelphia Orchestra has a MySpace page.

The Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, the Opera Company of Philadelphia, and just about every other arts organization in the city has a Facebook page. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has an RSS feed of its exhibitions on its Web site, and the Academy of Natural Sciences shares exhibit-construction videos.

The Philadelphia fine-arts scene has gone viral, and no one is hiding the reason.

Continue reading Phila. fine-arts scene goes where youth are (Philadelphia Inquirer: 2/24/09)

Inquirer: Philadelphia's fine arts and social media

I was interested to cover the convergence of social networks and fine arts institutions in a story running in today’s Inquirer. While it focuses on Philadelphia examples, there are broader implications, I think.

On Valentine’s Day, Pennsylvania Ballet staff members stood in the Merriam Theater’s lobby handing out coasters that bore what might have seemed a strange suggestion coming from an arts organization: Go to our YouTube channel.

What the mostly graying matinee audience made of the invitation to an online video-sharing site is unclear. What is clear is that the Pennsylvania Ballet is not alone in lusting after online social-network users.

The Kimmel Center has a Flickr photostream. The Curtis Institute of Music is on LinkedIn. The Arden Theatre and the Franklin Institute use Twitter. The Philadelphia Orchestra has a MySpace page. Read the rest here.

Go read the story and comment, Digg it here, and then come back and see the extras that didn’t make it into print.

Continue reading Inquirer: Philadelphia's fine arts and social media