The Super Bowl winners the Philadelphia Eagles will open its 2025 season tonight hosting the Dallas Cowboys at the Linc, so it seems only appropriate that I repost the below note, which was first published here on the eve of the 2025 Super Bowl. As far as the Phillies go — well, I hope they don’t blow it this time.
When I was in Philadelphia late last year, preparing a move back to my hometown in the not-too-distant future, I was settling up my bill at the club, and just as I said my goodbye to Shannon, the bartender, she nodded at me and said, “Go Birds” — with a somewhat cynical, flat affect, a tone that’s not uncommon to Philadelphians. I hadn’t heard the phrase before (I hadn’t been in the city for quite some time), and sensing my confusion, she said, “It’s something we say to each other here, George. Go Birds. You’ll get used to it.”
Now that the Eagles have a good shot at the Super Bowl again — after having won in 2018 and lost in 2023 — I’m putting on my Eagles cap. As a native-born Philadelphian, I have an obligation to do so, though I’m more of a baseball than a football fan myself. (The post-season performance of the Phillies last year was a nightmare from which I’m still trying to awake.) More than any enthusiasm for the game, I’m loyal to a city that takes its sports teams very seriously, even if on occasion its sports teams and their corporate owners treat their fans reprehensibly.
The phrase has transcended its original purpose as an expression of fandom and become — well, become a sign of affection, especially for the city itself. In 2023, shortly after the Eagles lost the Super Bowl, Philadelphian Hannah Workman wrote:
Even though the Phillies just lost the World Series and the Eagles just lost the Super Bowl, I still have hope for the remaining Philadelphia teams. Losing those championships after being underdogs and making it to the finals was something that really captured the “essence” of Philadelphia. … Philadelphians and anyone who roots for Philly sports teams have a special connection, and seeing it come to life while away from family at college has been so special. I may miss home, but when I hear the phrase, “Go Birds,” I don’t feel quite as alone.
Even non-Philadelphians appreciate the feeling. “I don’t have any specific issue with Philadelphia as a city, but the general animosity I feel towards Philly sports fans and their … passionate reputation tends to color the city as a whole for me,” Ned Donovan wrote a few days ago on Medium. He continues:
It’s fascinating, then, how language and colloquialisms can evolve beyond their original meaning. “Go Birds” isn’t just a rally cry for a football team — it’s a Philadelphia love language. It’s a way of saying “I see you, I acknowledge you, we’re in this together.” In a city known for its hardened exterior, these two words serve as a handshake of solidarity, a gentle reminder that beneath the tough facade beats a heart of gold.
“I still don’t like Philadelphia. Probably never will,” Donovan concludes. Of course, former Eagles center Jason Kelce’s “No one likes us and we don’t care” is the only reasonable response to such a sentiment:
So yeah, I’ll be watching the Eagles take on the Washington Commanders next Sunday. Go Birds? Goddamn right, Go Birds.
I’m delighted to hear, therefore, that Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center will launch a podcast series based on Mr. Rosen’s book next week. Per its web site:
Pursuit: The Founders’ Guide to Happiness is a 12-part series hosted by Jeffrey Rosen featuring Ken Burns and leading scholars. It explores how the founders understood personal growth as essential to the common good, and how you can put those ideas into practice today.
I wrote and published the below — along with its concluding popcult legerdemain — on July 3, 2024.
Every year around this time I try to honor the season by unsuccessfully pestering my wife and children to watch 1776 with me (they can’t be blamed for my failure, I suppose; all that prancing around to ersatz Gilbert and Sullivan, in the guise of a history lesson no less, brings even the most forgiving audience crying to its knees) and reading something that pertains to the historical significance of the moment. I’m about halfway through The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America by Jeffrey Rosen, a constitutional lawyer and the president of Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center, a book that I plan to unsuccessfully pester my wife and children to read.
The subtitle is well-descriptive of the book, which studies the role that classical virtues of Greek and Roman philosophers played in the education, thinking, and actions of the Founders — virtues such as order, temperance, humility, industry, frugality, sincerity, resolution, moderation, tranquility, cleanliness, justice, and silence. Many of the Founders, like Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams, repeatedly cited these virtues and especially Cicero in their writings and thinking, and they wormed their way into the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution as well. Although they held themselves to these high standards, the Founders frequently usually failed to meet those standards (their failure was most spectacularly miserable when it came to slavery), but it was the attempt to better themselves — to pursue “happiness” as it was defined during the Enlightenment, rather than the “happiness” as it’s defined in these more hedonistic days — that provided them with insights into democracy and republicanism.
As I say, I’m about midway through and am loathe to say more about it before I’m finished, but it did cater to my curiosity about the role that architecture and physical surroundings play in the way we think about ourselves and our world. In the early and mid eighteenth century, Philadelphia’s architects embraced the Georgian style of order, proportion, and restraint: even today, the buildings around Independence Mall in Philadelphia remain experienced on a human scale, and the orderly, practical rowhouses and trinities of Olde City and Elfreth’s Alley too seem appropriate to a cozy comfortability.
These were the buildings that the Founders lived and worked in and ate and drank at as they debated the foundational documents of the United States. Even today we can walk in their footsteps and admire the same Georgian order, proportion, and restraint. Alas, the style was not to last — architects around the turn of the century embraced the Federal and Greek Revival styles that led to buildings like the First Bank of the United States a few blocks away from Independence Hall. It appeared as if they were trying to live up to Philadelphia’s reputation as the “Athens of America,” and they were going to have the buildings to prove it, goddammit.
Twilight of the gods? The Greek Revival First Bank of the United States in Philadelphia, built in 1797. Photo: National Park Service.
Although it’s a bit of a left-field stretch, there’s another sense in which The Pursuit of Happiness is relevant to today’s Philadelphia. Rob McElhenney’s comedy It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is in many ways Pursuit‘s counter-text. Instead of cultivating the classical virtues of order, temperance, humility, industry, frugality, sincerity, resolution, moderation, tranquility, cleanliness, justice, and silence, the reprobates who frequent Paddy’s Pub in South Philadelphia cultivate the classical vices of disorder, crapulence, narcissism, sloth, extravagance, perfidy, half-heartedness, extremism, chaos, filth, bigotry, and noise. This provides a fertile ground for the show’s frequent satiric forays into politics and culture: Mac, Charlie, Frank, Dennis, and Sweet Dee confront issues like abortion, racism, sexual identity, drug addiction, urban blight, gun control, the MeToo movement, political corruption, and welfare by indulging in these vices without apology, self-control, or self-knowledge, often destroying property and the lives of innocents in the process.
I’m not sure that IASIP can really bear all the weight that I’m putting on it — the show is a gross-out comedy first and foremost, after all. But the show depicts what happens to people and politics when the classical virtues are ignored and the irrational id instead of reason and restraint is given free rein to trample over the rights of others. While the show’s setting in Philadelphia is in part an accident of chance — McElhenney is a Philadelphia native, and the show’s B-roll of Philadelphia locations is affectionate and lovingly knowledgeable — the gang traipses through the same streets as the Founders, an unintended comment on just how far we’ve fallen in the 248 years that have separated them. But if you want to see how we started, read The Pursuit of Happiness; to see where we ended up, watch It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
However you celebrate Independence Day and America’s 248th birthday tomorrow, I hope you make it a good one.
Nina Stemme sings while Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts The Philadelphia Orchestra in a production of Tristan und Isolde at Marian Anderson Hall on June 1, 2025. Photo: Jessica Griffin/The Philadelphia Orchestra.
It’s really too good not to share: you can now hear (until September 13) the recent concert performance of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde from The Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, featuring Nina Stemme’s final performance as Wagner’s doomed heroine, recorded live on June 1 of this year. WRTI notes that Wagner’s opera has had a long history with the Philadelphia Orchestra, having presented the first full performance of Tristan und Isolde in the United States 90 years ago. Melinda Whiting has more at the WRTI web site, where you can access the recording.
Now that summer is past, I’m hoping to post here more regularly: specifically about Philadelphia, my home town. I miss it, and hope to get there more. You can read more about my long personal relationship with Philadelphia in these blog posts. Feel free to let me know what you think.
When I was a wee lad in short trousers, my father regularly took my brother and me to the Sunday afternoon Philadelphia Orchestra matinees at the Academy of Music. At that time, I caught the tail end of Eugene Ormandy’s directorship of the orchestra and the very beginning of Riccardo Muti’s. This was in the 1970s and early 1980s, and these concerts, along with the now defunct WFLN-FM radio station, instilled me with an ongoing love of what philistines like myself call “classical music.” Although I recently made a pilgrimage to the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia to experience the 21st-century Philadelphia Orchestra (under Riccardo Muti again — I guess old habits die hard), it’s the Ormandy era I feel the most affection for, and any recording performed by the PhilOrch under Ormandy that comes up on my streaming channels still catches my attention — off I am down memory lane. What I most admired about Ormandy, and still do, was his supreme devotion to the music rather than any podium antics, and he was surprisingly attuned to the work of contemporary composers as well. The Ormandy strings, of course, were the main contributor to the orchestra’s reputation for the performance of works of the Romantic era as well as the Russians, but any exposure to its performances of works like the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony, especially with E. Power Biggs at the keyboard, reveals just what a powerhouse the orchestra as a whole was at its height. A crowdpleaser, sure, even a barnburner, but it was one of my father’s favorite recordings, and it pleases me too:
My friend Bruce Hodges, who kindly invited me to that Kimmel Center performance of the Verdi Requiem a few months ago, has just reviewed the new 94-CD box set from Sony, Eugene Ormandy: The Columbia Stereo Collection 1964-1983, for WRTI in Philadelphia — of which I am a proud supporter, and you should be too — and I recommend his review as a sensitive and long-overdue appreciation of Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra with which I fully concur. In my readings of classical music criticism, I often find that Ormandy is described as an excellent conductor, no doubt, but especially that he was “dependable” — not a firebrand like Bernstein — and the Philadelphia Orchestra, however excellent an ensemble, similarly “dependable” as well, especially those strings.
Saith Mr. Hodges:
[The] sumptuous, staggering new box of recordings … makes a compelling case for an outsized proclamation found elsewhere, declaring the Philadelphians as “America’s Finest Orchestra.” While the debate over that phrase could cause months of conversation over coffee or a nice bourbon, this latest compendium confirms that, during those 19 years, he and the musicians produced many of the classical music world’s most cherished documents. …
The remainder of the set contains myriad treasures, which demonstrate the Orchestra’s sleekness, versatility and fire. And while competition for some of the standard repertoire is fierce — I’m looking at you, nine Beethoven symphonies, as well as his well-traveled instrumental concertos and those by Mozart and Tchaikovsky — other discs show an exploratory instinct at a time when composers like Kodály, Nielsen, Ives, and others weren’t as well known in the United States. In the current age, when Mahler recordings are everywhere, people may forget that Ormandy steered the initial release of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony, in its completion by Deryck Cooke. Since that time, other ensembles and scholars have weighed in, but Ormandy was there first. …
But as this overwhelming collection shows, in conjunction with previous compilations, Ormandy’s era was complex — and “dependable” turns out to have its pluses. During these decades, he and his hardworking crew often released multiple recordings in a given year. Anytime that artists adopt a workaday pattern, some results will land on ears as routine or middle-of-the-road. That’s the byproduct of a conductor who placed a priority on showing up. Ormandy knew he had a team of tireless, world-class musicians — an American powerhouse — and was eager to share them with the world. With this kaleidoscopic showcase, it is clear that he succeeded.
For me, the Philadelphia Orchestra under Ormandy’s baton (as well as that of others) is one of the great American orchestras of all time, as the Vienna Philharmonic, when under Georg Solti’s baton (as well that of others), is one of the great European orchestras of all time. Both were born in Hungary; there must have been something in that Budapest water. Mr. Hodges checks off a lot of other boxes and digs deeper into Ormandy’s repertory of the period than few people could ever hope to. His review is here.
It is a rare day that I can solicit donations to organizations in both Vienna and Philadelphia, and this is the day.
The staff of radio klassik Stephansdom.
Tomorrow, March 13, radio klassik Stephansdom will be holding its second fundraising drive of the year — and this month the theme is spring, the season. The Vienna-based station is going all out tomorrow with special offers and programming (Beethoven’s Pastoral symphony and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring will be shoehorned in there, I’m sure), along with a chance for you to call in to your favorite hosts, not to mention a report from Christoph Wellner and the ongoing success of the campaign. I’ve written about radio klassik Stephansdom before, so I hope you’ll step up and donate here. (Though if you don’t subscribe to international calling or don’t know German, you may want to forego the call-in.)
The Pen & Pencil Club of Philadelphia.
Closer to home, the Pen & Pencil Club of Philadelphia, one of the nation’s oldest private press associations, has launched a GoFundMe page to cover a few pressing bills. In addition to this, the Club is seeking new members, and don’t let the fact that you don’t live in Philadelphia deter you — you’ll always be welcome when you drop by the city for a few days and want to enjoy a comfortable, gregarious drink with the gentlepeople of the press. You can donate here and learn more about the club here. I’ve written briefly about the Club before too.
