When Pope Francis was alive he fired off comments while traveling in the papal plane from Asia to Rome. Air […]
About: Thom Nickels
Thom Nickels: Public misbehavior shouldn’t be dismissed as ‘a Philly thing’
The phrase “it’s a Philly thing” reduces urban violence and misbehavior to a wink and a nod.
By Thom Nickels
Thom Nickels: 19th-century Philadelphia’s macabre, union-organizing novelist
Lippard makes Poe look like Mother Goose.
By Thom Nickels
Thom Nickels: Andy Warhol — the contrarian artist who redefined fame
It’s been almost 40 years since Andy Warhol died in Manhattan’s New York Hospital on February 22, 1987. Since his […]
Thom Nickels: From hidden river to historic hills, Manayunk through the years
My father’s family, originally from Dusseldorf, Germany, settled in Manayunk before the Civil War, so I grew up hearing about […]
Thom Nickels: Student journalism in the 1970s at The New Price Review
A lot has changed in journalism in the last fifty years
By Thom Nickels
Thom Nickels: Where medicine and spirituality meet
Mark Twain was half in love with her and called her “the most interesting woman that ever lived, and the […]
Thom Nickels: The tightly controlled life of an air traffic controller
In 1970, when I lived in Boston, I knew an air traffic controller who lived in a basement apartment on […]
Thom Nickels: The last Romanian princess
I’m on Amtrak’s Pennsylvanian traveling from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh to check out the legacy of the last Romanian Princess. Arranging […]