Stone Beautiful

A large percentage of the village of Chestnut Hill (our neighborhood in the city of Philadelphia) is built of stone -- Wissahickon schist, to be precise, with flecks of mica that led to it commonly being called "silverstone." Much of the stone was quarried in the immediate vicinity (some quarries are still active), and chunks of schist are periodically burped up out of the earth. Working in stone requires special skill and a special eye. The number of qualified stoneworkers in the world tallies in the dozens. One of them is a man to whom we were led by word of mouth when we moved to Philadelphia: Martin Smith, whose handiwork has earned him a well-deserved profile in the Philadelphia Inquirer. We are the proud owners of a small Martin Smith wall and other projects. You can see more of his work here.

Bond... the Real James Bond

I'm a latecomer to 007. I didn't pay much attention during the Sean Connery and Roger Moore years, and only started paying to see Bond films when Pierce Brosnan stepped into the role. I never read Ian Fleming's novels until, for some reason, my son became fascinated by them (and by Agatha Christie mysteries) when he was about eight years old. The Bond novels became part of our bedtime reading, usually between releases of Harry Potter books (though I expurgated Bond as I read aloud). I do think Daniel Craig's reinvention of Bond in a darker vein is a triumph, and I will be in a neighborhood theater when Quantum of Solace premieres in the U.S. next weekend.

Last week, I learned about the connection between Ian Fleming's hero and my neighborhood of Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia. James Bond was an Oxford-trained ornithologist who worked at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia (America's oldest science museum). Bond lived near the Philadelphia Cricket Club in Chestnut Hill. Fleming was a fan of the Caribbean and of birding, and Bond's "Birds of the West Indies" was by his bedstand when he was casting about for a suitable name for his fictional secret agent.

Bond worked at the Academy for some 60 years. According to a WHYY radio interview last week with an Academy executive, the real James Bond met the real Ian Fleming exactly once -- at Fleming's Jamaica escape, "Goldeneye" (which gets a lovely write-up in an article about Fleming and Jamaica in this New York Times article this weekend). During that visit, Fleming reportedly inscribed a copy of his novel "Goldeneye": "To the real James Bond from the man who stole his name." I am also reminded that the real Bond's birding book makes a cameo in the movie Die Another Day as Pierce Brosnan flips through it while visiting Havana. (Guess I missed it - must have been distracted by Halle Berry's emergence from the sea.)