The Da Vinci Art Alliance is in financial distress and needs help staying afloat, according to co-directors Samantha Connors and Bryant Girsch. “As many organizations post-COVID-19 lockdown, we’re struggling financially,” they announced via press release. The Alliance dates back to 1931, when 16 Italian immigrant artists and collectors founded the organization at a time when
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As the inhabitants of Philadelphia roast under the unrelenting sun of July and August, it is easy to dream of shading the entire city with solar panels in an effort to do something useful with the radiation that otherwise renders the daylight hours insufferable. Philadelphia Solar Week, August 15–19 is a start, with Solarize Philly,
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The Philadelphia Department of Public Health’s Air Management Services, the division responsible for monitoring air quality in the city, is holding a hearing on Wednesday, August 10 at 6 p.m. for public input into proposed revisions to its regulations. The regulations, which haven’t been updated since 1981, would expand the list of toxic chemicals monitored
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Spring Garden Street, which runs from river to river, is currently a fast but miserable route for a cyclist to cut across Center City. Much of it is unshaded and exposed to the sun, and the bike lane isn’t protected by anything but a white stripe on the asphalt. At the eastern end, cyclists who
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On July 11 Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf vetoed Senate Bill 275, which would have prevented local governments from enacting natural gas hookup bans. Senate Bill 275 is part of a national lobbying effort by the fossil gas industry to head off increasingly popular local initiatives to shift buildings away from fossil fuel use. Washington, D.C.,
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In much of Delaware County, secretive spiders spin tube-like webs along the bases of trees. Atypus snetsingeri (like a lot of bugs, it doesn’t have a common name) waits in a burrow below for an unsuspecting insect to brush against the web. Using enormous chelicerae (fangs) it stabs through the web, paralyzing its prey, and
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I realized also that besides protesting I had to clean up my own act. If I was buying natural gas, I was complicit.” — Judy Wicks, climate activist and former owner of the White Dog Cafe When Judy Wicks, the former owner of the White Dog Cafe, got back from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation
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Acloudy pool of water marks the spot where, every minute, about 1,200 gallons of toxic mine drainage, contaminated with sulfuric acid and iron, flows out of the ground in the hills above New Philadelphia, in Schuylkill County. Below lies a flooded mine void, the space where miners extracted tons of anthracite coal from the ground
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In 2019, after similar bans had been enacted in other cities, a draft of a bill to end gas hookups in new construction in Philadelphia was put on the desk of Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson, the head of City Council’s Committee on the Environment. Designed to speed the transition from fossil fuels, it seemed like
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Bats are small, delicate creatures, and wind turbines can be as large as half a football field long, reaching speeds of over 100 miles per hour. It’s not hard to guess the outcome when the two collide. Unfortunately, they collide frequently. Studies of bats killed by wind turbines have found four to seven dead bats
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