When I told my friends I would be switching schools, they were stunned. Last year, I chose to transfer from a “high-performing,” well-resourced suburban high school to attend an urban public school in Philadelphia for my junior year. I didn’t get kicked out, and I didn’t fail out. I actually made this choice because I
MoreIllustration by Marika Mirren The Everyday Activist essay by Derek Dorsey I work in the music industry. I’ve booked thousands of shows and promoted scores of festivals—and have spent an untold number of late nights watching everything from folk to hip-hop. Outside my home in Kensington, the sound of children playing down the street has
MoreIllustration by Heather Franzen Rutten Second Act essay by Angela A. Bey The 100-year-old brownstone of John M. Patterson Elementary School in Philadelphia held my first-grade classroom. I remember everything vividly—dried-up Crayola markers, paint-chipped walls and photocopies of “Hooked on Phonics” workbook pages. My peers walked in close-knit groups down the halls, and certain
MoreIllustration by Charlo Frade Black Snake at Standing Rock by Judy Wicks A 1,000-year-old Lakota prophecy tells of a Black Snake that would rise from the deep and move across the land, bringing destruction and great sorrow. The Sioux believe that the Black Snake has arrived in the form of the Dakota Access Pipeline and the
MoreIllustration by Herbie Hickmott The Morning After by Lucy Vernasco By 4:15 p.m., our only trace left in the Ardmore, Pennsylvania, Clinton campaign office was the 3-foot-tall “H” drawn on the chalkboard behind the counter. It was the week after the election, and our phone-banking card tables were in their final resting places in the
MoreIllustration by Bart Browne The Heart of the Holidays by Emily Livingston Last year walking my elderly, mixed-breed dog through the streets of Center City on a chilly morning following the holiday season, I noted a lot of holiday-related detritus all over the sidewalks. For blocks and blocks, the curbs were lined with broken and
MoreIllustration by Abayomi Louard-Moore The Work of Life by Angel Hogan At dinner recently, a friend opened her fortune cookie to find the following Muhammad Ali quote: “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.” We sat silent, considering. How has service impacted our lives? During my childhood, my
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Illustration by Jameela Wahlgren Something About Mary by Nancy Barton When my husband, Bill, and I first met Mary and her partner, Tom, they had already started Greensgrow Farms in Kensington, and we had recently bought a building a few blocks away to move our brewery operations. I don’t recall if she came to us
MoreIllustration by Anne Lambelet Sharing Our Table by Brian Ricci I’m fascinated by flavor. I was raised in a small town in the New Jersey suburbs, and at a young age I could walk by myself to school or meet my friends in the town village to trade baseball cards and trap crayfish in the
MoreIllustration by Kailey Whitman The Right to a Future essay by Rekha Dhillon-Richardson I was raised along the stunning coastline of British Columbia, Canada, where I developed a deep respect for the natural world. I can remember many days spent hiking up mountains, exploring the coastal tide-pools full of life and being amazed by Earth’s
MoreIllustration by Laura Weiszer Web of Life essay by Jane Dugdale Two years ago, my congregation, Central Baptist Church in Wayne, Pennsylvania, decided to focus on climate change as a moral and spiritual issue through its Ecology Mission Group. I had been a member of this activist congregation for decades, but my spiritual journey from
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