It can be easy to get discouraged these days. Everywhere we look, there are signs of a struggling planet and, often, it’s difficult to see a clear path to an effectual response. 2022 may well eclipse recent years as the hottest on record. Rainfall has alternated between being absent or violent in Pennsylvania, one of
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Dan Lavin returned from his friend Chuck’s wake feeling troubled. Lavin and his now-deceased husband had met Chuck and his wife in a support group for people with cancer. “Chuck was a really sharp-witted, spitfire kind of guy,” Lavin says. In the throes of his illness, Chuck bought a Corvette with a license plate that
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In 2020 sisters Rhonda Saltzman and Mercedes Brooks turned their lockdown restlessness into a blossoming business with their online store, Second Daughter Baking Co. After years of experience in restaurants, bakeries and the hospitality industry, Culinary Institute of America graduate Saltzman had an excellent résumé. But at the beginning of the pandemic she lost her job
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I love food. I feel like I need to say that because last month we did a vegan issue and I wrote a diatribe about Facebook’s failure to recognize that they are publishers, and how they shirk their responsibilities to society. Since publication, I’ve tried Vannah Banana’s vegan ice cream and it is delicious. This
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Violence causes so much turmoil on our planet. People in powerful places enable corporate plundering, war, greed and exploitation—and we are all caught up in the mess. We buy things online and shop at chain stores. It’s impossible to adhere to a moral code with every purchase. Still, I feel guilty when I think about
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Stephen Maciejewski hit the streets of Center City before dawn one morning last October to look for dead and injured birds, just like he did every morning during fall migration. Maciejewski, a volunteer for Audubon Pennsylvania, walked a set route around the glass-and-concrete canyons, documenting where he found birds that had collided with windows. He
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In March 2020 customer sign-ups at Philly Foodworks grew 50 times in just one week. Last year, overall, customer orders and customer sign-ups tripled when compared to 2019. “People were placing $600 fish orders,” Dylan Baird, Philly Foodworks co-founder and CEO, says. Baird credits some of this growth in his online business, which home delivers
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Matthew Rafferty started off in the restaurant industry as a dishwasher. Now—25 years later—he stands behind the window of his own establishment. It is a Sunday and Algorithm’s cobalt blue food truck is parked on the south side of the 1900 block of Washington Avenue. The truck offers an extensive vegan menu using ingredients sourced
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Trump sycophant and stooge Sebastin Gorka once said that the New Green Deal is like a watermelon: “It’s green on the outside but bright red on the inside.” As much as it pains me to give print space to someone like Gorka, this may be one of the best explanations of this aspirational legislation that
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Even in the before-times, I was always looking for an excuse to get outside. My bike commute from Walnut Hill to Washington Square was often the most satisfying part of my day. I slipped out at lunch to birdwatch in Independence National Historical Park. And the weekends found me herping, or doing my best to
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Over the last few years, the two-way protected bike lane on 11th Street has provided a safer route for thousands of people who commute and run errands in South Philadelphia every day. It’s become such an important route for cyclists, in fact, the city now plows the lane when it snows. But it nearly didn’t
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