When costume designer Heidi Barr looks out the window of her Wissahickon home, she doesn’t see rowhouses, paved streets, parked cars and tidy front yards. Instead, she envisions the Northwest Philly neighborhood as it would have looked 200 years ago, when lush fields dotted with farmhouses sloped toward the banks of the Schuylkill River. Back
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Photography by Milton Lindsay Cutting Edge By Siobhan Gleason When Greg Fuguet looks at a piece of storm-damaged lumber, he can already picture what shape it will take in its next life as a piece of art. After years of woodworking, Fuguet has developed his observational skills. He can determine how a tree will need
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If you can keep your cynicism in check, corporate displays of support for Black Lives Matter can seem admirable, sometimes even moving. When done authentically, companies are holding a mirror to themselves, deciding that they are not doing enough to address racial injustice, and committing to make change. Some of these vows are genuine and
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I don’t think i would have noticed that the patch of forest off Livesey Lane had been restored if Steve Jones, president of Wissahickon Restoration Volunteers (WRV), hadn’t told me. I visited the area on a humid morning in late May. The canopy was complete, shading out the sun completely. I heard the usual forest
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Photography courtesy Lora Snyder Troubled Waters By Siobhan Gleason On February 12, 2018, Delaware County residents along the Mariner East 2 pipeline route received a letter from Sunoco Pipeline LP, a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Operating LP, about a groundwater problem. Sunoco had punctured a local aquifer that residents of Edgmont Township relied on for
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Author Ashley Gripper (right) with fellow farmers Errol Chichester (left) and Tahirah Chichester (center). Photograph By Khaliah D. Pitts The Blacker The Berry By Ashley Gripper For more than 150 years, from the rural South to northern cities, Black people have used farming to build self-determined communities and resist oppressive structures that tear them down.
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Illustration by Sean Rynkewicz A City Divided By Randy Lobasso For many peaceful protesters in Philadelphia, June 2020 started off with a bang. Specifically, the bangs of flash grenades and tear gas canisters exploding below their feet as they attempted to escape from riot gear-clad police officers on Interstate 676. The murder of George Floyd
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In a rapidly changing world, the work of the home has been revealed for how challenging it is. Gender inequality in housework has also been exposed more than ever. Does it make any sense to say, through action or words: “Dear woman, you have been living under the global threat of the patriarchy from before
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Photography By Milton Lindsay Rich and Creamy By Alexandra W. Jones Vegan cheesemonger Steve Babaki knows the secret to making plant-based cheese taste like the real thing. Time. “If you just give it the time, it can taste so similar,” he says. The Conscious Cultures Creamery owner describes himself as 99.9% vegan (he occasionally nibbles
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