A red-bellied turtle basking on a log next to a pocket of wetlands at Point Breeze on the Schuylkill River doesn’t know that it is threatened, legally speaking, or that its home is tiny compared to the once-expansive ecosystem that used to stretch far beyond its current territory. The controversy over a planned warehouse development
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If you want to go — ultimately, that is — the way of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu, better call (email, write to … ) your legislators. When the South African theologian and human rights activist died in December 2021, his remains underwent — per his request — alkaline hydrolysis. Alkaline hydrolysis (AH) combines
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In the 340 years since Philadelphia’s founding, the city’s landscape has constantly shifted, as waves of development and redevelopment shipped out with the old and in with the new. Unfortunately, on many occasions across the city, transitions went terribly wrong. Consider Logan Triangle, a 35-acre site in North Philadelphia where developers filled in a creek
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Philadelphia is a city of old houses that offer, as anyone who lives in anything from a two-story row house to a grand Victorian knows, plenty of gaps where wildlife can slip in. Bats, flying squirrels and especially gray squirrels and raccoons can end up making a home in old crawl spaces, chimneys and in
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Grief hangs like a shroud. The memories from so many years together come rushing back in a storm of emotions. There are phone calls to make, condolences to share and a funeral to plan. And in the midst of it all sits a houseful of things: the books, furniture, memorabilia and heirlooms that are the
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On an April morning the heat soars into the realm of summer as a runner cruises back and forth along a paved path. A pair of chatting college students overtakes a man walking a spotted dog. And beyond the green borders, urban sounds from sirens and passing trolleys fade as birdsong rises through the trees.
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The year was 1970. The Jackson 5’s “I’ll Be There” was a number-one hit. The New York Knicks were the NBA champs. And Amira Abdul-Wakeel had made her first pound cake. Although she was extremely proud of her creation, her pride was quickly tempered when her mother tried it and proclaimed, “Sweetie, this is the
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Kai Wonder was preparing for graduate school when everything changed. Just as they were getting ready to pursue a master’s degree in social work, their mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She was given less than a year to live. In the process of grappling with their anxiety about death, Wonder began to research the
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Many of us are committed to living sustainably, but few of us have given much thought to dying sustainably. But as with any other phase of our life cycle, the impact of our death can vary based on the choices we make. What we do with the deceased body is the obvious place to start:
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It’s hard to know which battles to choose. We are confronted with such an overwhelming list of environmental problems (global warming, biodiversity loss, air pollution, environmental racism, sewage flooding into our rivers…) — not to mention all the interrelated social ills such as systemic racism, poverty and unabating gun violence — that we can excuse
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