FROM NORTH PHILLY TO CANNES TO LIVERPOOL

Rusting cities are all over today's NYT. I am happy to say that for the first time, and perhaps for the last time, I have scooped the Times, which today ran a story on Philadelphia's Greensgrow Farm, the subject of my recent musings on urban agriculture. I'm going to head there this weekend to pick up, among other things, a jar of "Honey from the Hood," one of its signature products.

Somehow, I always end up in places like Philadelphia's gritty Kensington neighborhood rather than the south of France. C'est dommage. But another article in today's Times has tempted me to hop on the next plane to Paris and then jump onto the first TGV southward, en route to the Cannes Film Festival. But, alas, I'll have to wait because I already missed the Cannes screening of what promises to be a Rustbelt Classic, Terence Davies's "Of Time and the City," a film about postindustrial Liverpool. The photo above is a stunning still from the film. The reviews thus far are overwhelmingly positive. The Boston Globe's Ty Burr writes that "Davies himself narrates over the inspired onrush of historical and archival footage, and his hoarse, whispered cadences have the urgency of the confessional and the scornful humor of the outsider.... [I]t's easily the most haunting work I've seen at Cannes." Any film that combines historical footage of monuments and "soulless estates," gorgeous music, and references to Engels and de Kooning deserves a wide audience. I can't wait to see it.