The Valley of the Shadow is an ongoing series documenting how those in Philadelphia’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods publicly mourn and commemorate their dead. Jeff Deeney, the man who brought you Today I Saw, knows these neighborhoods well from his days as a social worker. The hope is to shine a light on the city’s untouchables, brighten the darkest corners and gather and share ultra-vivid and all-too-real stories of loss, grief and remembrance. Look for it every Tuesday on Phawker! Why? Because we love you!
Search Results for: valley of the shadow
THUG LIFE: Cops Gangbang Shooting Suspects
DAILY NEWS: Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey yesterday asked Philadelphians not “to rush to judgment” when watching a video showing baton-wielding cops repeatedly striking, kicking and stomping three young men whom they had stopped after a triple shooting in Hunting Park. “On the surface, it certainly does not look good in terms of the amount of force that was used,” Ramsey said during a news conference with Mayor Nutter at police headquarters. Ramsey said that an Internal Affairs investigation is under way. D. Scott Perrine, a defense attorney representing the three men, said the commissioner seemed to be making excuses […]
EVERY TUESDAY: The Afterlife Of A Statistic
The Valley of the Shadow is an ongoing series documenting how those in Philadelphia’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods publicly mourn and commemorate their dead. Jeff Deeney, the man who brought you Today I Saw, knows these neighborhoods well from his days as a social worker. The hope is to shine a light on the city’s untouchables, brighten the darkest corners and gather-and-share ultra-vivid and all-too-real stories of loss, grief and remembrance. Look for it every Tuesday on Phawker! Why? Because we love you! RELATED: The wail that came up from the crowd was as if they heard that Sean […]
Being John Ashcroft
Jesus loves you, John Ashcroft. This you know, for the Bible told you so. And they hate you for it, these liberal heathens, these infidels of the media elite, these secular humanists. You were expecting this, for it was written long ago: The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. They mock your piety, call you Ned Flanders and worse. Racist. Homophobe. American Taliban. You pay them no mind. As per the Lord’s example, you turn the other cheek. “For every crucifixion there is a […]
FALSE PROPHET: Idiocracy In The Hall Of Mirrors
THE ATLANTIC: If you were an adherent, no one would be able to tell. You would look like any other American. You could be a mother, picking leftovers off your toddler’s plate. You could be the young man in headphones across the street. You could be a bookkeeper, a dentist, a grandmother icing cupcakes in her kitchen. You may well have an affiliation with an evangelical church. But you are hard to identify just from the way you look—which is good, because someday soon dark forces may try to track you down. You understand this sounds crazy, but you don’t […]
THE KING OF CALIFORNIA: Q&A W/ Dave Alvin
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is interview first published back in July when Dave Alvin was touring in support of the 25th anniversary of the release of The King Of California. We are reprising this interview in advance of his appearance at World Cafe Live tonight as part of The Reverend Horton Heat’s Holiday Hayride, featuring 5,6,7,8’s and The Voodoo Glowskulls. Enjoy. BY JONATHAN VALANIA Americana standard-bearer Dave Alvin is a national treasure. His first band, The Blasters, formed with his brother Phil, schooled a whole new generation of young punks about the glories of early to mid 20th Century American […]
Media Continues To Ignore The Fact That Bernie Sanders Is Far & Away The Most Popular Candidate Running For POTUS And Has Been For Months
ABC NEWS: A new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows a close contest in presidential election preferences, with Republicans lining up behind Donald Trump as their party’s presumptive nominee while the continued Democratic race is keeping Hillary Clinton’s side more unsettled. Greater voter registration among Republicans is one factor: Clinton’s 6-point lead among all adults, 48-42 percent in a general election matchup, switches to essentially a dead heat among registered voters, 46 percent for Trump, 44 percent for Clinton. Regardless, the contest has tightened considerably since March, when Clinton led among registered voters by 9 points. […] Remarkably, Clinton is […]
CINEMA: The Fox In The Madhouse
FOXCATCHER (2014, directed by Bennett Miller, 130 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK It’s hard to live in the state of Delaware and not say the name “DuPont” every day or two. Highways, hospitals, chemical plants and state parks all carry the name. In fact, the DuPonts own their home state in a way that few old money families can claim. Residents of Delaware have made peace living in the shadow of these modern day Dukes and Duchesses but there was something unnerving to discover in 1986 that the DuPont name had been affixed to homicide. The news broke that […]
MAGNET: The Third Coming Of Edward Sharpe
EDITOR’S NOTE: An excerpt of this story first posted July 26th 2013. To mark the occasion of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros frontman Alex Ebert winning a Golden Globe just a few moments ago, here is the complete story. Twenty-First Century ambassadors of peace and magic or dopey Christian hippie cult on wheels? MAGNET goes to Bonnaroo to find the answer and bears witness to the third coming of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. BY JONATHAN VALANIA It’s a few clicks before zero dark thirty backstage at Bonnaroo’s Which Stage where Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes are […]
NSA WHISTLEBLOWN: America Just Swallowed The Red Pill, About To Learn How Deep The Rabbit Hole Goes
THE GUARDIAN: The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell. The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection […]
GREETINGS FROM THE ROOF OF THE WORLD: Dispatches From The Highest Man On Earth
EDITOR’S NOTE: Phawker South American Correspondent St. John Barned-Smith just completed a two year stretch in Paraguay for the Peace Corps. He is currently in Nepal, Katmandu to be exact, and you can almost see neighboring Tibet from there. Next stop is India. He will be sending intermittent dispatches as our newly deputized Himalayan Correspondent. BY ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH HIMALAYAN CORRESPONDENT I spent three days in Manang waiting for the penicillin to evict that pernicious bacterial infection from my lungs. It was a relief to sling on my backpack, grab my hiking stick, and shake the knots and stiffness out […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: The Man Who Howled Wolf
FRESH AIR: Bad As Me, Waits’ 20th album, references the people he normally sings about: loners, losers, drunks and eccentrics. The “poet of outcasts,” as The New York Times once called Waits, romanticizes loneliness, the city of Chicago, death and love, among other topics. The album also pays homage to some of Waits’ favorite singers, including James Brown, Peggy Lee and Howlin’ Wolf. “I’ve always looked to [Wolf] for guidance, and probably always will,” Waits says. “He does have a voice that is otherworldly. It should be in a time capsule somewhere. When you’re a kid and you’re trying to […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]