by Randy LoBassoThis February Philadelphia City Council members held a hearing on whether or not to bring dockless e-scooter sharing into our transportation fold. With two e-scooters sitting in the chambers, citizens, company representatives and city employees filed in to give their arguments and testimonies for and against the new take on an old form
MoreIndependent Spirit: Unwelcome in their church, black congregants formed the Mother Bethel AME Church
by Constance Garcia-BarrioThe trouble during prayers that Sunday in 1787 at St. George’s Methodist Church on Fourth Street in Old City could have bloomed into a fistfight. “We had not long been upon our knees before I heard considerable scuffling and low talking,” Reverend Richard Allen (1760-1831) wrote years later. A trustee of white-led St.
MoreToday bike messenger Joe Cox spends his days riding the streets of Philadelphia. But tomorrow? He just might be running them.The pink-mohawk-sporting 32-year-old announced his campaign for a seat on Philadelphia City Council At-Large last year. He’s made himself known by protesting the city’s now defunct data-sharing agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and
MoreTwo years ago, social worker Karen Krivit and her daughter, Lily Sage began developing the Philly Goat Project, and last year, the pair brought on Raymond, Oonagh, Teddy, Oliver, Annie, Bebito, Ivy and Anthony as bleating ambassadors. In warmer weather, the goats’ primary job is grazing, but this winter, they are focused on recycling Christmas trees.
MoreCloudy in the glass and full of zingy life and pungency, a glass of wine shattered everything I’d previously believed about the drink. Wine had seemed boring or inaccessible, either anonymous and mediocre or interesting but wildly expensive. Then last year I tried a chardonnay from Australian natural wine producer Lucy Margaux Chardonnay. I was
MoreFilms, books and ballads tell of the South during the Civil War (April 1861-April 1865), but they seem struck dumb about black women in the North during those turbulent times. However, the Quaker City has lucked out. “Emilie Davis’s Civil War, the Diaries of a Free Black Woman in Philadelphia, 1863-1865, opens a personal window
MoreBy Claire Marie PorterEvery kid deserves food, water, shelter and a pony,” reads one of many slogans at the Chamounix Equestrian Center. Tucked into the North Philadelphia Strawberry Mansion neighborhood, low-income youth have the opportunity to experience English-style horseback riding through a long-term equine sports program called Work to Ride.On a bright fall morning, mounted
MoreBy Cynthia KreilickMy 92-year-old mother was sitting in the dining room of her nursing home, eating her first breakfast there. Everything was unfamiliar—the food, the place, the people. When my daughter and I arrived, she was disoriented and emotionally unhinged. As we tried to comfort her, a very frail, white-haired woman in a wheelchair rolled over,
MoreBy Randy LoBassoEach year, the U.S. Census conducts its American Community Survey, asking people around the country what sort of transportation they use to get to work. Every time it’s released, it seems someone in the media attempts to use the numbers to come to a definitive conclusion about bicycling. For instance, bicycling in Philadelphia fell
MoreDear Millennials,I am in awe of your enthusiasm, optimism and relentless quest for justice. When I work with you, I am reminded of my own feelings, at the age of 16 in 1969. It was the dawn of the environmental movement. I made a commitment the next spring—the first Earth Day—to a lifetime of work
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