Wednesday July 26

I arrive at the south-west corner of 40th and Chestnut today to find a deafening jackhammer at work a few feet from where I had been placing the listening station.


This seems to require a new location- I decide to try out the corner of 40th and Walnut, a site that I had considered previously. There's better shade there in the morning, in the shadow of the recently re-opened Walnut West branch of the Philadelphia Free Library. It's a corner with more street life- sidewalk seating at restaurants, a park nearby. It's also at the edge of UPenn's campus, which will mean more students, but with a McDonald's, and one of the few grocery stores in the area, it still attracts all sorts of folks. I hoist up the listening station to re-locate.
At the new location, I seem to encounter more polite resistance- and also more challenging reactions to my offer of " would you like to try the listening station?" More than one person demands to know the point of the experience, or what they will get out of it. I'm determined to answer honestly- "you'll have to try to find out" - but it's not easy to hold that line!
Eventually a young man sitting on the wall of the library agrees to try it out- he came to print out resumes at the library, but has to make another plan, as it is closed. He tells me how his rooommate plays the same song on the piano every morning.
While we're using the station, my friends Nachshon David and Rebecca arrive, and take 5 minutes each: