At the Pulaski Zeralda Community Garden in Germantown, the air is thick with the scent of green onions and okra. These vegetables grow from some of the 38 plots, including one dedicated to a local women’s center. This season alone, the garden yielded blackberries, strawberries, tomatoes, okra, peppers, corn and collards. The garden participates in
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Margaret isn’t as mobile as she used to be. At 79 and still recovering from a car accident that forced her to learn how to walk again, she relies on her walker and cane to get around. Some days she doesn’t descend the stairs from the second floor of her North Philadelphia home because the
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On a sunny afternoon in late spring, 27 sixth graders from Mount Airy’s Henry H. Houston Elementary School skipped and hooted their way to SEPTA’s Carpenter Train Station, as if already savoring the adventure of planting trees there. “We identified flowers and pollinators along the way,” says Christine Bush, a STEM (science, technology, engineering and
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Today, Weavers Way Co-op counts more than 10,000 member households, with storefronts in Ambler, Chestnut Hill and Mount Airy, and a new store due to open this year in Germantown. But long-time member Sylvia Carter can remember 50 years back to its humble beginnings as a buying club in a church basement. Carter moved to
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Samara Banks was the life of the party. Everyone waited for her to arrive at family gatherings, knowing that she would be the one to rally her cousins and entertain the crowd with a song or dance. “She was always happy and hopeful,” Latanya Byrd says. “She loved children and people loved her naturally. And
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The late autumn wind began to bite during the 1838 Black Metropolis walking tour last year, but historian Michiko Quinones warmed the 10 participants with stories of riches, a riot and secret dealings in Philly’s antebellum Black community. “Some 20,000 Black people lived in Philadelphia in the late 1830s,” Quinones said. “The 1838 census showed
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It was a muggy morning, on a midsummer Wednesday, and the fish weren’t biting. A dozen or so preteens kept dropping their baited lines into the water from a dock and pulling them out empty. Or often, tangled, requiring repeated assistance of nearby camp counselors. A tedious exercise? Perhaps. But just beneath the surface were
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Jim Loudon’s face lights up as he recalls reaching his one-million-meter ergometer (commonly known as a rowing machine) goal earlier this year. Many rowers can achieve that in two months, he says. It took Loudon two years — but he did it as a below-the-left-elbow amputee. An eight-time indoor rowing world record holder, Loudon trains
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Archers celebrated summer solstice with bows and arrows on the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum archery range this year. Instructors like Kelly Kemmerle, who leads the youth archery program, welcomed Philly residents onto the archery range for safety lessons and target practice. Many attendees were new to the sport, holding a bow and
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The big library — the size of several classrooms — in the Cook-Wissahickon School in Roxborough stands as a monument to activism. Closed for several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the library now serves pre-kindergarteners through middle schoolers with story hours and a robust lending program that enrich the lives of students.
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Mayana Carter knew she wanted to create a different kind of bridal salon. Before opening Kinfolk Bride, Carter had worked in the bridal industry for 10 years in various capacities. “I found myself longing to see more designers of color, more women designers and more small makers,” she says, “and I wanted the people in
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