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 Steve NeumannChris argerakis, a music teacher now in his 11th year at Andrew Jackson Elementary School in South Philly, remembers how desperately his program needed money when he began teaching at the start of the 2007 financial crisis. To raise funds, he resorted to cold calling local businesses within a four-block radius of the
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By Estelle TracyAs a local food supporter, you know where your food is coming from. You pick berries at the orchard and get Brandywine tomatoes from the farmers market. Over time, you even develop a preference for a coffee origin.
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By Alexandra JonesOn the two-acre Henry Got Crops urban farm at W.B. Saul High School in Roxborough, it’s easy to forget you’re still in the city. Lambs frolic near their mothers on green pastures while ruddy-colored cows placidly chew their cud. Salad greens grow green, purple, and red in tidy rows, destined to be harvested
Moreby Jillian BaxterOn April 24th, PennFuture and the Clean Air Council co-sponsored an environmental forum for City Council At-Large candidates at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University. With over 30 candidates running for Philadelphia’s seven at-large seats, following the policy goals of each is a daunting task. The forum was meant to show
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Every day when I bike home from work, I pause at the corner of 11th and Spruce and look at the all-white "ghost" bike placed there to memorialize Emily Fredericks, who lost her life while biking at that intersection. It's a place where I momentarily reflect on the fragility of life and remind myself not
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by Claire Marie Porter (full story can be found here)Scott Keeley began playing didgeridoos to treat his sleep apnea. “Didgeridoo players don’t snore,” he was told by his doctor.
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by Claire Marie Porter (full story can be read here)Michele Judge, a percussionist and jewelry-maker, began making her own drums after playing a friend’s steel tongue drum in southern Mexico. To her, the sound and feel of the instrument was intoxicating.
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by Claire Marie Porter(full story can be found here)While Tom Rudnitsky doesn’t make instruments from scratch, he restores them—or as he might describe it, he saves their souls.
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by Claire Marie Porter(full story can be found here)Ryan Hyde makes guitars and basses from scratch at NextFab. Over the course of six months, blocks of raw wood become customized, high-quality instruments. He is a luthier, a word derived from the French word “luth,” meaning lyre, that has evolved to describe someone who builds stringed
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by Claire Marie Porter(full story can be found here)For some, making and customizing instruments is the practical solution to unsustainable artistic ventures. For Matt Garfield, modifying instruments is a marriage between art and technology.
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