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They were all one-hit wonders. (If you read to the end, you'll see the titles of their singular Top 40 singles.)
Great Expectations, on the other hand, has some good sequels in the works.
Great Expectations is an effort to breed momentum for a better Philadelphia through civic dialogue, in-depth journalism, and scholarly research. It is a partnership of The Inquirer and the Project for Civic Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania. It will be supported in 2008 by grants from the Lenfest Foundation and the William Penn Foundation.
Last Dec. 2, the first Great Expectations Citizens Convention drew a packed house to the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Michael Nutter gave the keynote. Now the city's new mayor, he credited Great Expectations with helping to sharpen the focus on issues and foster the reform energy that swept him to victory.
Presented with a copy of the Citizens Agenda for Philadelphia's Future, a 12-part civic to-do list that grew out of Great Expectations, Nutter asked the project to monitor his progress during 2008. He asked the citizens present to reconvene at the end of '08 to grade his administration on his first year.
We'll take him up on his invitation. A second Citizens Convention will be held in December.
Mayoral elections generate a lot of heat and energy. What good does it do a city, though, to have a robust dialogue every four years, but sleepwalk through the next three? Citizens should stay attentive, engaged and demanding (which is a different thing from cynically disgusted).
Here's a rundown of what Great Expectations is planning in 2008 to help citizens achieve that goal:
The Kimmel Center project: As I discussed in my column Saturday, we've teamed with PennPraxis, maestros of the Delaware riverfront vision, to help the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts generate ideas to improve the building's vast but barren public spaces. You're invited to write in your ideas. Send them to my e-mail address below. The column can be found at http://go.philly.com/satullo.
Neighborhood forums: In late February and early March, we will hold a citizens forum in each of the 10 City Council districts. At these sessions, the final version of the Citizens Agenda, revised according to citizen input from Dec. 2, will be presented. Council members have been invited to come and hear citizen priorities for 2008. These forums also will follow up on the Civic Leaders Summit that the project convened in October. At that session, the
neighborhood activists sketched out the "New Deal" they'd like to see between neighborhoods and City Hall, especially Council members. The New Deal, they said, is "no deals" - in other words, politics as usual replaced by transparency, cooperation, empowerment and a sense of service.
To see a schedule of these forums, and to register, please visit the project web site, www.greatexpectations07.com.
Agenda monitoring: We'll hold other events during the year to help you assess the city's progress on the issues you care about, leading up to the next Citizens Convention.
The "Mayor for a Day" game: We're working with the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia to develop a fun, in-depth, interactive citizens budget game. This game, which can be played individually online or by groups in a forum, will present citizens with an accurate array of the real choices facing the city's leaders. As they work through the game, players will have to make decisions to spend here, but to scrimp there, to changes taxes here, but face the consequences there. Later in the year, we'll take the game out on the road, so that civic groups or students can play it in a live, collaborative setting.
Regional culture: At mid-year, we'll announce plans for a broad civic dialogue about the role of arts, culture and history in the Philadelphia region, with an eye to coming up with doable plan for giving those glories of our civic life a more stable foundation.
Those are our plans for Philadelphia's year of living hopefully. As in '07, I'm sure, events will spur new ideas that we'll try to execute.
If you want to learn more about the project, or to register for the mailing list, visit the Web site at - all together now - www.greatexpectations07.com.
Now for those one-hit wonders: Mungo Jerry, "In the Summertime"; The Jaggerz, "The Rapper"; White Plains, "My Baby Loves Lovin' "; Norman Greenbaum, "Spirit in the Sky" (nobody missed that one, right?); The Ides of March, "Vehicle"; Brewer and Shipley, the immortal "One Toke over the Line."
