This story was originally published by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. It is the third story in a three-part series about the roots and realities of gun violence in Black America. You can read the first installments at thetrace.org. Sign up for The Trace newsletters here. Walter Palmer, 90, vividly
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From April 26 to April 29, Philadelphia and its adjacent counties will be competing against cities around the world to recruit the greatest number of people to find the most species in their regions. Using the iNaturalist app as a tool, the City Nature Challenge encourages us to explore and document the biodiversity right where
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Within minutes of stepping onto McGee Island off the coast of Maine for a writing residency, I learned through a phone call that my son, Manuel, my only child, had died. Dogged by alcohol, cough syrup, schizophrenia and half-cured pneumonia — he left the hospital against medical advice — he succumbed in his room at
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On the fourth floor of the Bok Building, a handful of students are gathered in the airy, white-walled workshop space at Weaver House. Each person sits at their own floor loom, a large and elegantly complex machine constructed from blonde wood, strung across with fibers. The mood in the room is one of concentration, each
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In a women’s recovery home for addiction, a volunteer offered to wash Rhonda Richardson’s laundry for her. After seeing that Richardson owned only a few worn pieces of clothing, the woman gave her a voucher for free clothes from The Wardrobe. Little did Richardson know, she’d find both confidence-boosting outfits and a support group at
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Philly AIDS Thrift has all kinds of patrons: teachers, tourists, college students and on occasion, celebrities like singer Miley Cyrus and Eagles players. As manager and longtime employee Adam Proctor puts it, the nonprofit thrift store attracts “every kind of person ever.” Located at 710 South 5th Street, Philly AIDS Thrift has an eclectic, artsy
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By age 5, Philadelphia native Tatyana Woodard knew she was different. Born with a male body, she felt like a girl. She preferred girls’ clothes and loved White Diamonds, her grandmother’s perfume. Over time, Woodard’s conviction and hidden stash of feminine outfits grew. “At 16, I was put out of my house due to my
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“My life,” says Julie Slavet, “is all about tires.” Slavet is exaggerating — but only slightly. As the executive director of the Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership, part of her job is to help improve Tacony Creek Park, a 300-acre preserve in Northeast Philadelphia. And for the last couple years, that’s meant dealing with illegally dumped tires.
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Tasha Sammons and her son, S’vante, were expecting a cheerful dinner at their home in Olney on Father’s Day weekend five years ago. “S’vante was happy, waiting for his dad,” Sammons says. “But my husband, Ted, who’d had diabetes since age 9, never made it home. He had a heart attack and died [on the
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It was September 1999 and Denise Statham didn’t know danger was lapping at her doorstep. Her employer had closed their office earlier that day and Statham was finishing some work on her laptop when the power went out. She decided to nap for a while and see if it came back on. At about 7
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Six-year-old West Philly native Idris McClellan looks very much at home running through Awbury Arboretum on a recent fall day, but he’s actually there on doctor’s orders. McClellan is part of Prescribe Outside, a collaborative program of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), Awbury, Let’s Go Outdoors and the U.S. Forest Service to encourage outdoor time
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