observations on Philly

Philadelphia looks great these days– a far cry from the depressing eyesore of my first visit here in the late 1980’s. I’ve been a number of times since, but not since late 2002, until now.

However, there seem to be some mental health issues here. It’s not too surprising to see homeless people walking the streets at 6 AM making bizarre speeches (as I saw this morning). But there’s been at least one fairly crazy person in every business I’ve entered so far, mostly people saying weird, extended things to themselves in normal conversational voices. Late middle-aged women seem to be especially prone to it here, and many show hard-to-describe physical symptoms as well. I really wonder if there might have been some sort of city-wide mercury poisoning incident at some point, or something like that.