Are we in drive or reverse? The truth is that sustainable technologies are nothing new. The chain-driven safety bicycle (safer than the precarious penny-farthing) grew popular in the late 1800s. Electric cars date back to the mid-1800s, and Philadelphia entered the EV history books towards the end of that century, when locals Henry G. Morris
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There aren’t as many American bumble bees (Bombus pensylvanicus) as there used to be in the state the insect is named after. The big black and yellow bees are in decline, with the International Union for Conservation of Nature rating the species as vulnerable. Although the American bumble bee might need protection in Pennsylvania, there
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I had never heard of the Philadelphia Art Commission back in 2022 when I tuned in to a Zoom meeting about plans to build a driving range at the Cobbs Creek Golf Course. When reporting on a public meeting of a City commission, it’s not uncommon to find yourself waiting impatiently through all the other
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In 2003 former Tuskegee Airman and pioneering Black journalist Chuck Stone wrote “Squizzy the Black Squirrel,” about a Philadelphia boy who bonds with a black squirrel in Fairmount Park. Squizzy was the only black squirrel the boy had ever seen in the park, but visitors today still spot them gathering acorns and running up trees.
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The soaring rhetoric of campaign trails often meets the hard realities of governance once candidates take office. Competing demands, limited budgets and City Council’s own priorities can make for a challenging first year for any new mayor. Back in March 2023, when Cherelle Parker was a candidate in the Democratic primary, Grid published her responses
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At her inauguration on January 2, 2024, Cherelle Parker said, “We will make Philadelphia the safest, cleanest and greenest big city in the nation.” Philadelphia has long been plagued by litter, poorly-contained household trash and illegal dumping (“short dumping”) of waste that should be taken directly to a commercial dump: old tires, debris from construction,
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Like a lot of Grid readers, I’m still adjusting to the reality of the 2024 presidential election. There is my conscious perception of reality, based on the facts of the world, and there is my gut-level sense of reality, colored by how I think the world should be. The two are out of whack. Case
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Who you are determines how well and how long you live. In 2012 the life expectancy for white Philadelphians was 78 years, versus 73 for Black Philadelphians, according to the latest Health of the City Report, produced by the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. In 2019 that five-year gap remained, and it widened to six
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What’s more important, jobs or health? The question nominally sits at the heart of the struggle to ban smoking in casinos in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, covered by Rebecca McCarthy in this issue. The people who work at casinos say they should not have to breathe tobacco smoke at work, since that can lead to
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Grid has been writing about food since our beginning. It’s not just because we enjoy eating and thinking about what we’ll eat next, though we do. It’s because it matters. It takes a lot of resources to produce the food we eat. More than half the land area of the United States is devoted to
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