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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Cloudy in the glass and full of zingy life and pungency, a glass of wine shattered everything I’d previously believed about the drink. Wine had seemed boring or inaccessible, either anonymous and mediocre or interesting but wildly expensive. Then last year I tried a chardonnay from Australian natural wine producer Lucy Margaux Chardonnay. I was
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Films, books and ballads tell of the South during the Civil War (April 1861-April 1865), but they seem struck dumb about black women in the North during those turbulent times. However, the Quaker City has lucked out. “Emilie Davis’s Civil War, the Diaries of a Free Black Woman in Philadelphia, 1863-1865, opens a personal window
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By Claire Marie PorterEvery kid deserves food, water, shelter and a pony,” reads one of many slogans at the Chamounix Equestrian Center. Tucked into the North Philadelphia Strawberry Mansion neighborhood, low-income youth have the opportunity to experience English-style horseback riding through a long-term equine sports program called Work to Ride.On a bright fall morning, mounted
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By Cynthia KreilickMy 92-year-old mother was sitting in the dining room of her nursing home, eating her first breakfast there. Everything was unfamiliar—the food, the place, the people. When my daughter and I arrived, she was disoriented and emotionally unhinged. As we tried to comfort her, a very frail, white-haired woman in a wheelchair rolled over,
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By Bernard BrownDawn over the Delaware River painted clouds rose and orange in the frigid morning air as three participants in the Philadelphia Mid-Winter Bird Census stepped out of a hatchback.Keith Russell, Shawn Towey and Patrick McGill stood at the base of the driveway for Pulaski Park in North Philadelphia, binoculars in hand, and confronted
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By Randy LoBassoEach year, the U.S. Census conducts its American Community Survey, asking people around the country what sort of transportation they use to get to work. Every time it’s released, it seems someone in the media attempts to use the numbers to come to a definitive conclusion about bicycling. For instance, bicycling in Philadelphia fell
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Dear Millennials,I am in awe of your enthusiasm, optimism and relentless quest for justice. When I work with you, I am reminded of my own feelings, at the age of 16 in 1969. It was the dawn of the environmental movement. I made a commitment the next spring—the first Earth Day—to a lifetime of work
MoreInterested in trying meditation but unsure where to begin? Here is an Inner Strength technique you can use to get started. Begin by sitting in a comfortable, upright position, straightening your spine and neck, and letting your hands rest gently on your thighs or on the table in front of you.Direct your attention toward
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When I saw that my butcher was calling, I dreaded answering the phone. Yes, when I decided to replace meat with an entirely plant-based menu at Honest Tom’s, I knew there would be blowback. I knew there’d be a lot of social media sniping, and maybe even some people stopping into my restaurant to give
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Given the unruliness of time machines, apt to choose their own destinations, you’ll need a bike, car or SEPTA to see the scattered sites where enslaved Black women helped to get colonial Philadelphia going.Take Black Alice, aka Alice of Dunks Ferry, who reached age 116, c.1686 to 1802, historians say. Her parents, from Barbados, arrived
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