I often listen to BBC radio on WHYY in the wee hours of the morning and one of my favorite programs is “From our own correspondent,” reports from foreign correspondents but with a personal perspective.

In a similar vein, this is my subjective account of Pennsylvania State Representative Cherelle Parker’s 9th Ward Town Hall meeting at the Jenks public K-8 School last Thursday. It was the first in a series of five such meetings to be held in Parker’s 200th legislative district between now and March 25th.

I vacillated about whether or not to attend. In the past two weeks, I had dissipated my civic energies emailing and telephoning Barnes & Noble to interest the bookstore chain in taking over the now vacant Borders property. A town meeting could be entertaining but just as likely, dispiriting. Then my kids kicked me out of the house.

To my surprise and relief, a festive atmosphere greeted me in the school gym where representatives of many government agencies, utilities, social service organizations and a career school staffed tables arranged in a U around folding seats in the center.

As Representative Parker worked the room, I browsed the tables and chatted with the staffers, taking in as many tidbits of information as simultaneously collecting freebies would allow- literature, pens, notepads and a compact fluorescent light bulb from the PECO rep. (The gentleman did not know whether PECO would buy back electricity from me if I ever actually install solar panels on our roof; it would be sweet to reverse-meter PECO during the sunny summer months.)

It appeared that the number of hired hands and politicos outnumbered plain citizens by about 50 to 30. I wondered why there were not more. I had been alerted to the meeting by email, by robo-phone call and possibly by regular mail, too. Perhaps state legislators seem more removed because they spend much time in Harrisburg. Mayor Nutter successfully used this tact in his primary battle against Representative Dwight Evans. Perhaps Parker should have advertised refreshments; after a long day people like to be refreshed.

Among the luminaries were Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers who spoke about successful fire prevention in the city and the importance of installing carbon monoxide detectors. Parker also acknowledged the presence of Derek Green, a city council aide and recent candidate himself for council and Alex Talmadge, one time candidate for District Attorney, there representing one of the participating organizations.

She also took a good-natured but obligatory swipe at the Board of Revision of Taxes which had its own table. My patriotism was stirred by the presence and overt dedication of the public servants in the room.

They made short presentations and stressed they are here to assist us in any number of ways should, for example, we find our home being foreclosed upon, or needing to check out a contractor, or fall victim to a crime.

The Philadelphia School District is even offering courses through a new “Parents University.”

There are a multitude of services for the elderly or disabled and, unless we die young, not one of us will avoid entering one if not both of these categories. Parker noted for the record that, despite the non-partisan nature of the meeting, only Democratic Party ward leader, John O’Connell was present and not the Republican ward leader. I exercised restraint by not interjecting “Duh, what do you expect in a one-party town?”

Parker, who acted as mistress of ceremonies, is an animated speaker. She shared some of her personal history. She was the “child of a child;” her mother gave birth to her at age 16. Now, here she was, after serving as a longtime aide to Councilwoman Marian Tasco, one of only three African-American women in the 203-seat state House.

Soon she will undertake a six-week tour of South America as an Eisenhower fellow. In Chile, she will meet President Michele Bachelet, the daughter of a general who had been tortured and died in custody under the regime of former Chilean dictator Augosto Pinochet. Just how cool is that!

I had made some mental notes of her efforts and positions. She is a supporter of the Second Amendment right to bear arms but believes requiring citizens to register their guns will reduce gun violence. She reported having to fight to have $300 million dollars restored to the state’s budget for education. She made a point of how conservative the rest of Pennsylvania is.

An hour and a half into the evening, at which time not one attendee had yet had a chance to say a word and Parker was still only inching toward the audience participation part, I raised my hand. It was time for what was publicized as a meeting to cease being a presentation. I had seated myself front row center because I like to take photographs. Only the representative’s high heels kept her view of her constituents from being completely obstructed by my outstretched arm. She yielded.

That Parker had to struggle to preserve funds for education prompted me to launch back into my campaign mode of 2007 when I ran on the Green Party for 8th District City Council. “I think you should take the state legislature on a bus to go down to Washington DC because it is our federal government that has close to 200,000 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq still looking for weapons of mass destruction, but only 12,000 troops to help out in Haiti where the only thing left standing is the American embassy. And that’s because we could afford to build it to withstand an earthquake.

"Meanwhile, big banks now owned by the citizens of the U.S. are paying out big bonuses to their execs. And here in Philadelphia we still have to fight for every cent we get for public education.”

I later reflected that meetings like these always attract mouthy malcontents. There were rumblings at my remarks and I would like to think they indicated assent but they could easily have been reaction to party-pooping. My work was done when the woman who Parker called on next pressed the representative on universal health care, referring to initiatives taken in other states.

The meeting soon concluded and Parker graciously gathered me in for a photograph with herself, others and a huge dark blue flag that she had just presented to Christina Moore, the Jenks School Dean of students. It was the flag of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Oh what a wonderful world it would be if the wealth in the commonwealth, the nation, and the world, were more common. Brian Rudnick