tag: poverty

I live in a neighborhood that, to the world outside it, is virtually invisible. Places like my neighborhood in East Dayton are almost never depicted in TV shows or in movies — if they are, they are represented as alien places into which the protagonists enter with some peril…

For active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared to love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone looking on. Whereas active love is labor and perseverance, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science…

I was born in Santa Barbara, California — gorgeous, clean, sunny Santa Barbara. Eight years ago, I bought a home in Kensington, a notoriously poor and drug-ridden section of Philadelphia. For the first few years I lived here, trash would rain into my backyard from neighboring rooftops (cereal boxes…