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
More
Watch how We Love Philly’s program at One Arts Center is teaching students how to heal themselves and their communities through mindfulness and entrepreneurship and what the school district can learn from this program. Read the full story here.
More
When you approach the storefronts at 52nd and Warren streets, just off Lancaster Avenue in West Philadelphia, you might notice the handcrafted facades of One Art Community Center’s Earthship-style building, which uses glass bottles and cans placed in cement to provide structure and light. In the center’s backyard, a group of students are working on
More
Alisa Shargorodsky, the founder of ECHO Systems, hears it time and time again when she tells someone she works in the waste industry: “Oh, are you guys into recycling?” They’re not. “We’re not here to advocate for recycling,” she’ll say. “We are building infrastructure for radical reuse.” ECHO Systems envisions a world where food service
More
On February 9, Kensington resident Kristin Dudley texted her mother Pamela without context: “Hey mom—could you do something for me? Write the words ‘Mother Butter’ on a piece of paper, one time in cursive, the next just regular—take a pic and send it to me?” “Ok … ” her mother responded. Dudley, a self-described “serial
More
Tucked into a little corner of Germantown, there’s a backyard garden unlike any other. At the entrance there’s a black-and-white sign with a combined triangle and circle logo. After passing through the barbed-wire gate, there’s a stone path passing several trees and plants along the side of the house. In the back, a circular garden
More
Years ago, my parents told Miss Farber, a white 60ish teacher at the elementary school in our Black working-class neighborhood, that when my brother and I graduated they would enroll us in a junior high program for gifted students. “There’s a Hebrew element at that school,” Miss Farber said, “and your children won’t make it.”
More
Tapeta Mayson, Philadelphia’s 2020-2021 poet laureate, knows that residents of Germantown can have mixed feelings about water. The area is susceptible to flooding during heavy rains and the loss and displacement that sometimes comes as a result. A native of Liberia who grew up in North Philly and Germantown, Mayson—in addition to being a poet—is
More
On a cold February morning, a new birding group huddled up at the John James Audubon Center in Audubon, Montgomery County. Though there’s nothing remarkable about birders getting together at the museum, the former home of America’s most famous birder, what was remarkable was what they were celebrating—the launch of a more accessible kind of
More
Parking has ruined—and continues to ruin—cities. Don’t believe me? Just go to any zoning board hearing or street engineering meeting—or better yet, talk to your neighbors. You will likely hear that there’s not enough parking in your part of town, and any changes to the streets, or the landscape, or bringing in more residents, will
More
Portrait by James Boyle. When I trained in martial arts, my instructor taught me that “good form will carry me through.” There were times when I felt so tired that I became sloppy and let my guard down, which would get me punched in the face. I learned that when I became more technical and
More