Blogger looked at Phila. through all its changes, with love

They were love letters to a city.

Some about places we all know, but maybe do not appreciate.

Others about hidden spots only few have heard of.

A hike to the Pavilion in the Trees, a hard-to-find tree house high above Fairmount Park.

The old-world aromas of Port Richmond's Polish cafés.

The charms of one of the city's few remaining clapboard houses, nestled along Moyamensing Avenue.

Notes of affection and wonder, some with a touch of schmaltz. Others, in true Philly form, with blunt honesty.

Three hundred in all, cataloged and curated over the last 31/2 years by Emma Fried-Cassorla on her popular blog, Philly Love Notes.

On Tuesday, Fried-Cassorla informed her readers that the blog had published its last post.

It was time, she wrote.

Three hundred seemed a fitting end.

Most important, she said, the blog had served its purpose:

It had "seen this city through its transformation."

At its simplest, Philly Love Notes is a to-do list, an archive of interesting places to visit around the city.

But as it grew, it became something more meaningful: an inventory of the emotions attached to those places, an oral history of a transforming city, written by the people witnessing it firsthand.

Snapshots of a Philadelphia beginning to see itself in a new light: as a place to be proud of.

A place whose residents were slowly beginning to "be our own boosters," says Fried-Cassorla, 33, communications manager at the Delaware River Waterfront Corp.

And now, even in retirement, the blog serves as the perfect rejoinder to the tired narrative of Philly as a second-rate city, the type of trite dismissal bandied about, most recently, in a Washington Post article on Philly's preparations for the papal visit.

She started on a whim, as a way to discover her hometown.

With a degree from Barnard College, Fried-Cassorla, born in Germantown, raised in Cheltenham, was working as a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania. Long days studying the development of visual systems of baby fish. After a breakup, she moved to East Passyunk, from East Mount Airy.

She needed to get out, meet people, see things. She asked some coworkers about their favorite city spots - ones she didn't know about.

They all went together. She took photos. And wrote the love letters. At first, just a few sentences, on say, the magnificence of the Fischer Fine Arts Library, or the industrial beauty of the Race Street Pier.

She opened it up to friends.

Fifty love notes later, the blog had taken on a life of its own.

Fried-Cassorla accepted odes to everyday pleasures, like writer Dan McQuade's note on running over the Ben Franklin Bridge:

"The Ben Franklin Bridge is this city: Beautiful and formidable, underrated and unmatched."

She posted this simple truth about our city from the essayist Emma Eisenberg:

"It's so goddamn beautiful. It's so goddamn broken."

She fielded poignant remembrances of the past - like one from Chris Bartlett, executive director of the William Way LGBT Community Center. His love letter was addressed to the Church of St. Luke and the Epiphany, a haven, he wrote, during the worst years of the AIDS epidemic, the scene of hundreds of funerals for gay men and women who had been ostracized even in death.

Over time, the collection, which can be found at http://www.phillylovenotes.com, came to reflect a shift in the conversation about Philadelphia. Parts of the city were transforming. The blog, in its way, became a primary document of that change.

And changing the way we talk about our city isn't just a feel-good project, Fried-Cassorla points out. It's how you build real change.

"When you start to change how you talk about a city," she said, "it makes people invested, makes politicians more invested, makes people want to make this an even better city."

So, if you haven't done it already, read the love letters.

215-854-2759

@MikeNewall