(5 of 5)
Perhaps compassion is a good place to start with in this place where the gears of a nation grinding out progress have ceased to turn. A place where childhood is a luxury few children can afford. A place that is the antithesis of what Walt Whitman once celebrated. For whatever else is true of Camden, it takes a lesser-known native son to sing its song today -- one who elegized his gritty world with a tenderness that transcends it.
the blind musician
extending an old tin cup
collects a snowflake
-- Nick Virgilio, Camden, 1928-89