In 2005, Bill Golderer, then pastor of the Presbyterian church at 315 S. Broad Street, ripped the pews out of the sanctuary to create a big dining room bathed in light from stained glass windows. That move helped thrust the historic limestone church, now Broad Street Ministry (BSM), toward radical, inclusive hospitality. Today, BSM offers,
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In 2018 I wrote a zine called “Don’t Deny It, You Need a Self Help Manual on How to Be Clean.” I wrote it as a cheeky way to establish some ground rules or an understanding of domestic behaviors with any new cleaning clients. I also started to send it out to magazines and radio
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On a frigid January morning I made a pilgrimage to the grave of Alexander Wilson, the so-called “Father of American Ornithology,” at the Gloria Dei Church cemetery at Christian Street and Columbus Boulevard in South Philadelphia. I didn’t know exactly where it was, but the old cemetery is small, and in about five minutes I
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Before boarding a 12-foot Bevin’s Skiff on the reservoir at the Discovery Center at the end of last school year, Northeast High School student Christopher Medina had never been on the water. “I never realized how awkward it was to row, sitting with your back to the front. We did sometimes mess up and did
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Convicted of attempted murder at age 17, Philly performing artist and musician Andre Simms, or DayOneNotDayTwo, his stage name, spent eight years in an adult prison. Released in 2021, he’s now the lead youth organizer with the Youth Art & Self-Empowerment Project (YASP), 924 Cherry Street, a group of young people working to reform the
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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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On a rainy day in early October, clear water flows from the downspout draining the roof of Peter Zettlemoyer’s livestock corral, bound for Manor Creek just down the hill. Two black and white Holstein heifers that Zettlemoyer is raising for a nearby dairy farmer, amble over to the railing that pens them in to check
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As Don Shump, the owner of the Philadelphia Bee Company, prepares to move a bald-faced hornet nest from the side of a large grave marker at Fernwood Cemetery in Lansdowne, he offers some advice. “These girls tend to run and gun. So when they’re mad, they tend to hit you and spin back off for
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A certain group that visited Ursinus College’s Berman Museum in the 2000s amazed Susan Shifrin, associate director for education at the time. During the visit, six patients living with dementia from a nearby Montgomery County care facility went from silence to talk to glints of joy while viewing paintings. “I realized there was a need
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As i write this, the rain has been at it for six hours, and the National Weather Service has issued a flood watch. Behind my house, the rain barrel, connected to a downspout draining the back section of the roof, is overflowing, with the excess water joining the rest of the block’s runoff in our
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