May 19, 2005 edition

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COVER STORIES:

Speaking of history

The Frankford Historical Society museum celebrated its 100th anniversary this year, but doubts that it will turn 101 are many.
The landscape for smaller historical societies and museums is "grim and challenging," said Roland Woodward, a consultant for non-profit communities who addressed an eclectic mix of historians, business leaders, educators and neighbors who met at the museum’s auditorium on May 5 to discuss its future.
With an average operating budget that hovers between $10,000 and $15,000, the ailing museum falls impossibly short of the average $250,000 Woodward estimated is needed to run a "sustainable" museum.

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From mean to clean

When Jose Rojas got released from a Philadelphia prison many years ago, there were no special programs to help him readapt in relative freedom.
"You got released from the House of Correction and they gave you a token and sixty cents at two o’clock in the morning," said Rojas, who now works with current and former prison inmates as a case manager with Impact Services, a Kensington-based social service organization.
The token was to catch a bus and the change was for a transfer. But once you got to wherever you were going, he explained, it was up to you to fend for yourself.

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EDITORIAL

Just get it done

Now that Corey Kemp has gone splat with his fall from grace, plunging from Philly powerbroker to food server for a catering business, maybe City Council can finally get serious about meaningful ethics reform.

The aftermath of the ex-city treasurer’s conviction in the federal pay-to-play corruption trial has been interesting. Despite all those phone chats the FBI recorded between Kemp and the dearly departed Ron White, Mayor Street’s good buddy who certainly would have been deserving of the title deputy mayor, a downtrodden Kemp emerged from court moaning that the full story, whatever that is, never came out.

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