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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By Claire Marie PorterBright clothing, big signs and a sense of what’s safe guide these car-free families.
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If you’ve ever wondered how an artist’s sensibilities might manifest in their day-to-day, now is your chance to explore their habitats, where you can see first-hand how their artistic mediums and personal aesthetics both inform and reflect their home life.For the past ten years Mt. Airy Learning Tree, a nonprofit community service organization that provides
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by Claire Marie PorterTeen entrepreneurs Shayna Kaye and Olivia Odike started their company Apollow Pillow in May. They make and sell colorful, quirky pillows, and donate a pillow to a child through the Ronald McDonald House for each one sold. The 14-year-olds met while attending Philadelphia’s chapter of Young Entrepreneurs Academy (YEA!), a year-long program that
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Contributed by Luke Hearon, The John J. Willaman & Martha Haas Valentine Plant Protection InternThe following story is courtesy of the Morris Arboreteum blog.While not particularly rare in the eastern half of the U.S., the saddleback caterpillar (Acharia stimulea) has long been on my bug-seeing bucket list. I do wish I had encountered the caterpillar
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By Bernard BrownA white sheet strung up between two trees in Bartram’s Garden glowed blue in the dark August night. It was speckled with hundreds of insects, ranging in size from tiny wasps and midges, whose identity could only be discerned with a magnifying glass, to geometer moths an inch-and-a-half across. A small crowd of children
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By Randy LobassoUrging his colleagues in the state legislature to act swiftly on parking-protected bike lanes and pedestrian plaza legislation, Pennsylvania State Senator Larry Farnese of Philadelphia penned a dire warning June 19.“If we fail to act ... we risk the loss of several major bike lane projects funded for construction this year,” Farnese wrote
MoreBy Claire Marie PorterKerry Boland doesn’t remember getting a tick bite. It was 2002 and she was entering her first semester at Georgetown University when she began experiencing flu-like symptoms, which landed her in the emergency room. A short time later, she started experiencing extreme food intolerances. She couldn’t eat gluten without hours of vomiting
MoreBy Claire Marie PorterIt’s the imperfect trees that make a beautiful piece of furniture for John Duffy of Stable Tables. “I don’t really consider myself an artist or anything like that,” Duffy explains. “I’m more of a business person.”Stable Tables, he says, began after he bought a table from a carpenter in Maryland and had to
MoreBy Constance Garcia-Barrio Devaluing black women’s work is a holdover from slavery time. It often cuts our employment opportunities, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank focused on economic issues. The view prevails that women of African ancestry should go on being “…de mule uh de world…” as the acid pen of
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By Meenal RavalThere’s a Global Climate Strike planned for Friday, September 20, days before the United Nations Climate Summit in New York City on September 23. The Global Climate Strike invites people of all ages to strike—by refusing to attend work and school—to disrupt the social order and to push our governments to act on
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