With birds singing in the background, three fellows at the Alliance for Watershed Education (AWE) walk through Camden’s Cramer Hill Nature Preserve. They point out a frog in a puddle, examine bones and feathers of a wild turkey, and point out invasive plants, among other conservation challenges. They wrap up with a request for visitors
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The imp of irony plotted an odd course between painter Jane Golden and Philadelphia. If Golden hadn’t gotten a grim diagnosis years ago, the city could have missed out on lots of healing. Since her arrival here decades ago, Golden, 67, executive director of Mural Arts Philadelphia, has brought wholeness to many neighborhoods with museum-quality
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Ten adults dressed in layers, hats and face masks gathered on a chilly September morning to go birding in Tacony Creek Park. They kept a couple yards apart from each other while peering through binoculars at local birds such as robins, kingfishers and cardinals along with some recently arrived winter visitors like a red-breasted nuthatch
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When covid-19 hit, Soy Cafe owner Alice Leung was forced to close. It was a stressful time for everyone, especially for small-business owners. However, Leung kept her cool and brainstormed how to support her staff. “We’re still going through it, and it’s such a sad and hard thing to cope with,” says Leung, “But somehow,
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It was just after midnight on June 30, 2018, and Ag Manta and his brother, Vin, were riding their bicycles home from Main Street in Manayunk toward the path along Kelly Drive. Manta remembers the driver of a gray Scion taunting them from behind, using homophobic slurs. Then things escalated. Manta remembers hearing screeching tires
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Over the summer my girls—ages 11, 13 and 14,—and I did a deep cleaning/purging of the house. We reorganized furniture, cleaned out the basement, addressed the backs of closets and set up online learning spaces while we gracefully swept up the settled dust after my husband (their stepdad) removed the last of his things. We
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What happens to a dream deferred? … Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? Langston Hughes, “Harlem” In the aftermath of the police killing of Walter Wallace, a 27 year old black man suffering from bipolar disorder, I think the answer to Langston Hughes’ famous question is both: It exacts
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Death by Another Name By Constance Garcia-Barrio If she served as the lookout during a gas station holdup, Marie “Mechie” Scott, then 19, believed she would get cash to buy the heroin that helped her blunt deep pain. Raped first at age 5 and repeatedly into her teens, in addition to enduring poverty and homelessness,
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With a smattering of bright yellow refrigerators across the city, Michelle Nelson is on a mission to better the lives of food-insecure Philadelphians in light of the pandemic. “COVID has amplified problems that have always existed and made them more prevalent,” says Nelson, the founder of the Mama-Tee.com Community Fridge Project, which established Philadelphia’s first
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