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Story Time at the River Alive! Learning Trail

Meet at the Learning Trail every Friday for Story Time and activities! ¡Ven al Learning Trail cada viernes para una hora de cuentos y actividades!

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August 16, 2023
1 min read

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  1. Jake on A community air quality monitoring project keeps track of what industry (and neighbors) emit
  2. June on Philadelphia is making moves to ban toxic and noisy gas-powered leaf blowers
  3. Gregg Gorton on For some undocumented minors living in Philadelphia, making it to the United States is just one step in a long journey to safety and security
  4. Danielle Bronowicz on Documentary explores what happens to Philly’s trash after it’s tossed
  5. John on Black-owned, Afrocentric bookstore Books & Stuff celebrates the power of literacy and diversity

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The sound of percussion rang out at the Center Cit The sound of percussion rang out at the Center City headquarters of the School District of Philadelphia as the youth drumline Mad Beatz Philly opened a celebratory press conference in early March. The Black-led, parent-driven organization Lift Every Voice Philly (LEV) was celebrating a major victory: after 18 months of advocacy by parents across the city’s schools, the district passed its first comprehensive wellness policy to protect students’ basic needs. Jamila Carter, a member of LEV, stood at a podium and called the victory “a long time coming,” as a group of children and parents stood behind her, clad in purple LEV shirts, cheering and waving pom-poms. “We refused to accept schools where our children could not drink water freely, where daily movement and recess were denied, and where collective punishment and silent lunches were treated as normal,” Carter said. “I didn’t come to this work as a trained activist or organizer. I came to it as a mother.” ➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com ✍️ Gabriel Donahue #philadelphia #phillyschools #education #studentrights #lifteveryvoice
As a parent of a 13-year-old and a 10-year-old who As a parent of a 13-year-old and a 10-year-old who play baseball in West Philly’s Philadelphia Athletics Youth Sports Association (PAYSA), I know firsthand how hard it can be to find space to play organized sports. The league has grown from 170 kids in 2014 to around 300 today, with a waiting list of 20. The demand keeps growing, but the field space remains the same. On a typical night, my daughter shares practice time with two other teams. Three teams rotate across one proper baseball field and two “open space” areas where drills can be run. That means each team gets about 30 minutes per week of practice on an actual field. Adding to the field stress, our makeshift batting cage recently fell apart and is now unusable. And yet, everyone associated with PAYSA would tell you how lucky we are. ➡️ Read the full note from our publisher at gridphilly.com ✍️ Alex Mulcahy #philadelphia #youthsports #fieldsports #syntheticturf #urbangreenspace
Nature lovers, mark your calendars for Love Your P Nature lovers, mark your calendars for Love Your Park Week 2026. One hundred forty park friends groups care for the city’s parks year-round and are calling for volunteers to join the cleanup and beautification days hosted from May 9-17. “I think it’s a great way to be outside with the community,” says Catherine Lowther, president of Friends of Penn Treaty Park. “It doesn’t have to be our park … There’s so many to choose from.” Love Your Park Week has been a staple, biannual event in the Philadelphia parks scene since its launch in 2012 by Fairmount Park Conservancy and Philadelphia Parks & Recreation. Grid caught up with a few friends groups to find out how they’ll be celebrating their parks and how volunteers can join in on stewardship efforts at a park near them. ➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com ✍️ Julia Lowe and Gabriel Donahue 📸 Photo courtesy of Tacony Creek Park #philadelphia #urbannature #urbangreenspace #phillyparks #parkcleanup
Events happening in and around Philadelphia this w Events happening in and around Philadelphia this weekend! ➡️ Electronics Recycling: Weavers Way Environment Committee is hosting their annual electronic recycling event at Chestnut Hill College. Anything that has a plug or can turn on can be recycled at this event. When: Saturday, April 11 (9:00 AM - 1:00 PM) Where: Chestnut Hill College 9601 Germantown Avenue Philadelphia, PA 19118 ➡️ Upcycling Workshop - Create Your Own Totebag: Get ready to turn old into new and design your very own totebag at this upcycling workshop! Don’t miss out on this opportunity to learn new skills and contribute to sustainability. When: Sunday, April 12 (12:00 PM - 4:00 PM) Where: 5122 Springfield Avenue Philadelphia, PA 19143 ➡️ Climate Resilience Plan Community Workshop: Bartram’s Garden and ACANA are proud to host a community workshop in collaboration with the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Sustainability. Together, we’ve helped design a workshop that is specific to our neighborhood, grounded in local experiences, and centered on community voices. This workshop will provide direct input to Philadelphia’s Citywide Climate Resilience Plan, which is focused on developing strategies at different scales — citywide and neighborhood-level solutions — to prepare for extreme heat, flooding, storms, power outages, and other climate impacts. When: Sunday, April 12 (2:00 PM - 5:00 PM) Where: Coach House 5400 Lindbergh Boulevard Philadelphia, PA 19143 #philadelphia #philly #phillysupportphilly #eventsinphilly #phillyevents
When entering Cobbs Creek Park at Florence Avenue When entering Cobbs Creek Park at Florence Avenue and Cobbs Creek Parkway, a mural on the sidewalk asks, “How far can you hop?” On an adjacent wooden display, a spinning wheel lists actions inspired by reptiles and amphibians in the creek — slither, crawl, jump — and challenges the player to cross a series of tree stumps using those motions. The pair is one of four Little Nature Playgrounds, built to welcome visitors to the nearly four-mile Cobbs Creek Trail at safe intersections. Each is inspired by different nature elements found within the 851-acre park, which constitutes much of Philadelphia’s West and Southwest border. “There’s not a whole lot of entrances where you can cross from the residential side of the street to the park side of the street, and as you go further south on the Parkway, it gets worse,” says Monica Allison, co-founder of the community group Cobbs Creek Neighbors, which brought the idea to Clean Air Council to create the miniature playgrounds. Cobbs Creek was considered a high-priority neighborhood for more and higher-quality playsites in a 2023 study of Philadelphia, where nearly a third of census-designated neighborhoods were found to have limited access to playsites. Cobbs Creek’s high-priority status led to the funding of the Little Nature Playgrounds project, also called Art in the Park. ➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com ✍️ Gabriel Donahue 📸 Photo courtesy of Clean Air Council #philadelphia #urbannature #phillyparks #cobbscreek #parksforall
If not for the COVID-19 pandemic, the plan to reno If not for the COVID-19 pandemic, the plan to renovate Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park in South Philadelphia might have proceeded without significant opposition. Workplace lockdowns and virtual schooling drove people outdoors to get some exercise and socialize in the fresh air. In South Philadelphia, many of them found the park’s shuttered golf course and fell in love with the landscape of meadows, picturesque trees and marshy water features, calling it the “South Philly Meadows.” “To my delight, I discovered we have wilderness coming back in South Philly, a 10-minute bike ride from my house,” says Rich Garella, who lives in South Philadelphia and has been visiting FDR Park since he was a child. Fans such as Garella and Anisa George were horrified to learn that the Meadows were mostly doomed. The park’s master plan called for parts of the Meadows to be excavated to create wetlands. Other sections would be filled and graded to create 16 playing fields, surfaced with synthetic turf and doubling as stormwater buffers, with storage tanks built underneath. All the trees in the way would be felled. Fans of the abandoned golf course formed a group called Save the Meadows to advocate for the space. Garella, George and eight others filed a lawsuit in Philadelphia Orphans’ Court on March 25, 2024, to force the City to stop the renovation and restore the park to its pre-renovation state. “The overall thing is we want to stop the bleeding,” says George. “We don’t want any more trees to be cut. We don’t want toxic turf, and we want a pause in the plan. We’d like a better plan.” ➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com ✍️ Bernard Brown 📸 Tracie Van Auken #philadelphia #urbannature #phillyparks #fdrpark #saveourparks
April is here and with it comes another issue of G April is here and with it comes another issue of Grid! Here are just a few of the stories you’ll find in issue 203: • FDR Park’s renovation proceeds as lawsuit challenges its legality • Park advocates aim to make Cobbs Creek more appealing and accessible to neighbor • Love Your Park Week returns with citywide volunteer opportunities ➡️ Read the new issue now at gridphilly.com 📸 Cover photos by Gabriel Donahue, Chris Baker Evens, and Tracie Van Auken #philadelphia #phillynews #sustainability #environmentalnews #independentjournalism
In the late 18th century, the French chemist Antoi In the late 18th century, the French chemist Antoine Lavoisier radically changed how we understand the physical world. He was perplexed by the fact that when metal rusted, despite becoming more brittle, it actually gained weight rather than losing it. Why would metal weigh more when it was decomposing? It weighed more, Lavoisier came to understand, because the metal was absorbing a then-unknown element: oxygen. This led to his publishing in the 1789 book “Traité Élémentaire de Chimie” the law of conservation of mass, which states that during a chemical reaction, matter can be neither created nor destroyed. The burning log in your campfire that seems to have disappeared has merely been transformed into ash, water vapor and carbon dioxide. Matter, alas, doesn’t disappear when we throw trash in the garbage, either. We say “throwing it away” but the age-old sustainability question remains: Where is “away?” The reality is that we are just throwing it. ➡️ Read the full note from our publisher at gridphilly.com ✍️ Alex Mulcahy #philadelphia #sustainability #sustainabilitymatters #wastemanagement #airqualitytesting
The air in the Delaware Valley’s industrial corrid The air in the Delaware Valley’s industrial corridor doesn’t always smell nice. Major odor events assaulted the noses of Delaware County residents in 2019, 2020 and, most recently, last fall. During the 2019 event, Clean Air Council director of programs Eve Miari tried to check air quality readings from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection monitoring equipment in Marcus Hook. “When we went to access the data, it missed it by two hours,” she says. The monitor worked by capturing air in canisters at intervals, and whatever had caused the odor had leaked out between samplings. In early 2025, Clean Air Council launched an EPA-funded network of air quality monitors to ensure that no leak would go undocumented again. The network stretches from Southwest Philadelphia through southern Delaware County, along an industrial corridor that dates back centuries. “Pretty much the entire waterfront is industry,” Miari says. Miari and Clean Air Council’s Russell Zerbo rattle off a list of industrial facilities along the stretch, including the power plant in Eddystone, the Monroe Refinery in Marcus Hook and the Reworld (formerly Covanta) trash-burning power plant and Kimberly Clark paper mill in Chester. Additionally, highways intersect at multiple points (I-76, I-95, I-476), bringing tailpipe emissions from millions of cars and trucks into the surrounding communities. “We have more bad air quality days than good. These frontline communities are bearing the brunt of the impact,” Miari says. ➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com ✍️ Bernard Brown 📸 Chris Baker Evens #philadelphia #pollution #cleanairmatters #airquality #airqualitytesting
Germantown Kitchen Garden’s farmer, Amanda Staples Germantown Kitchen Garden’s farmer, Amanda Staples, who hails from Upper Darby, did not grow up on a farm. Although her grandparents operated a Christmas tree farm near Clarks Summit, Lackawanna County, Staples’ initial hands-on contact with farming was growing lima beans in her backyard for an elementary school assignment. After graduating from Temple University with a degree in religion, Staples moved to Kensington, where she first encountered community gardens popping up on vacant lots. A friend invited her to help at a community garden in Camden, and that experience inspired Staples to mobilize volunteers and build a garden near her Kensington home. She nurtured the garden while earning money from customer service jobs at Philadelphia International Airport, Wawa and the Franklin Institute. Eventually, Staples committed to an internship at Scarecrow Hill Farm in Lancaster County. “Everything you did there was about farming. It was by far the most intensive learning experience,” she recalls. Her aspirations to become a production farmer started taking shape. Buying a half-acre plot in Kensington proved impossible. Then something unexpected happened. An acquaintance was purchasing a home in Germantown, but the seller made the deal contingent on buying the adjacent parcel. It was a forest of neglect, so overgrown it was impenetrable. But it was affordable and available. Staples and her husband bought it in 2008. “It didn’t feel that risky,” she says. “It felt crazy, but not risky.” Founded on her conviction that farms should exist in cities, Staples began to build Germantown Kitchen Garden as the “hybrid homestead and tiny business” she envisioned. ➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com ✍️ Marilyn Anthony 📸 Kristen Harrison #philadelphia #communitygarden #urbanfarm #growyourownfood #homegrowntomatoes
A 1970s-era stereo receiver. Red leather boots. Ni A 1970s-era stereo receiver. Red leather boots. Nine fully intact eggplants. These are just a few of the unexpected objects the Cobbs Creek Ambassadors have come across while cleaning up Cobbs Creek Park in West Philadelphia. But most of what they pick up is just typical litter: bottles, cans, food wrappers, old tires. And the volunteers behind this grassroots organization have picked up tons of it — an average of about 9.5 tons of trash each year, in fact — since starting up in 2018. Cobbs Creek Ambassadors was co-founded by Rich Guffanti and Andrew Wheeler, acquaintances who first volunteered together building a wall in the Spruce Hill Bird Sanctuary. They enjoyed each other’s company and volunteered again as a duo to clear gutter leaves along Cobbs Creek Park between Catherine and Christian streets. This effort became a regular meet-up. ➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com ✍️ Emily Kovach 📸 Tracie Van Auken #philadelphia #urbannature #parkcleanup #phillyparks #cobbscreek
Last year I wrote a series of columns in Grid abou Last year I wrote a series of columns in Grid about several ways the City of Philadelphia could expand composting. While I have had some productive conversations with City officials over the last year, I have seen no indication that they are prepared to begin any large scale residential composting pilot program in the near future. But that doesn’t mean we should throw up our hands and give up. Composting is something an individual can do to reduce their carbon impact. And while a paid composting service, like the one provided by Bennett Compost, works for some, it doesn’t meet everyone’s needs. That is why we want to make sure we are educating people about the benefits of composting. In the coming months, while we wait for the City to incorporate composting into the municipal waste services I will lay out some practical ways people can set up their own composting systems. So what do you need to compost the right way? ➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com ✍️ Tim Bennett 📸 Photo courtesy of Delpixart #philadelphia #compost #composting #foodwaste #zerowaste
Events happening in and around Philadelphia this w Events happening in and around Philadelphia this weekend! ➡️ Pennypack Creek and Park Cleanup: Join us for a morning of community action followed by an afternoon of celebration! We’re coming together to make our park and creek cleaner and more welcoming for everyone. Whether you’re a longtime neighbor, a first-time volunteer, or bringing the whole family, this event is for anyone who wants to make a positive impact on our shared green spaces. When: Saturday, March 21st (10:00 AM - 11:30 AM) Where: Pennypack on the Delaware Park 7801 State Road Philadelphia, PA 19136 ➡️ A DEEPLY ROOTED TROLLEY TOUR BY HARRIETTS BOOKSHOP: Welcome to A DEEPLY ROOTED TROLLEY TOUR by Harriett’s Bookshop! A DEEPLY ROOTED Trolley Tour is our three hour, hop on-hop off tour that celebrates local culture, history, music, and deeply rooted tradition by visiting new and seasoned spaces throughout Philadelphia. When: Saturday, March 21st (3:00 PM - 5:30 PM) Where: Harriett’s Bookshop 258 East Girard Avenue Philadelphia, PA 19125 ➡️ Dyeing with Plants Spring Workshop: Learn to make colorful dyes for your next fabric- or egg-dyeing project from common plants you can find during your next hike or trip to the grocery store! Design and dye one yard of fabric using the batik technique and natural dyes. If you finish early, try your new skills on smaller, egg canvases. When: Sunday, March 22nd (1:00 PM - 2:30 PM) Where: Tyler Arboretum 515 Painter Road Media, PA 19063 #philadelphia #philly #phillysupportphilly #eventsinphilly #phillyevents
Opening with subterranean footage of the foam cups Opening with subterranean footage of the foam cups, plastic bottles and sodden cardboard that decorate the sewer inlets underneath Philadelphia, filmmaker Melissa Langer’s 2025 documentary, “In Excess,” probes into the unseen places where the city’s litter ends up. Spoiler alert: When it comes to the city’s trash, there is no throwing it “away.” “Every object we discard lives on somewhere else, disturbing someone else’s environment, forever,” says Langer. Langer, who moved to Philadelphia in 2017, immediately noticed disproportionate amounts of litter and illegal dumping in Northeast Philly and began exploring what the City was doing about it. The product is her 70-minute feature, which weaves haunting stretches of trash footage with candid vignettes of the people tasked with cleaning it up, from Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) sewer inlet crews to a small Streets Department team that monitors hundreds of security cameras for illegal dumping. ➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com ✍️ Julia Lowe 📸 Melissa Langer #philadelphia #waste #wastemanagement #wastedisposal #illegaldumping #litter
Hanna Kahler lives in West Philadelphia and rides Hanna Kahler lives in West Philadelphia and rides her blue commuter bicycle to work in the Graduate Hospital neighborhood, a trip she says takes 18 minutes via the Schuylkill River Trail and parking-protected bike lanes on Walnut and Chestnut streets. When she spoke to Grid on Feb. 12, more than two weeks after the last snowflakes of the Jan. 25 winter storm fell, she was still unable to ride to work. She could take SEPTA’s 40 bus. “If it works well, it takes 40 minutes, but it hasn’t been working well,” she says. Mostly she’s been walking, which takes 47 minutes. “The City has completely dropped the ball on maintaining the bike lanes,” Kahler says. The snow that fell directly onto the bike lanes and that the City did not clear wasn’t the only challenge. “Ignoring it is bad enough, but they’ve shoved piles of snow into the bike lanes,” Kahler says, referring to heaps — some as big as an SUV — that City workers clearing the roads had plowed into the bike lanes at intersections. ➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com ✍️ Bernard Brown 📸 Tracie Van Auken #philadelphia #bikelane #safestreets #bikesafety #bicyclesafety #bikephl
At 11 a.m. on Valentine’s Day, Aspen Simone stood At 11 a.m. on Valentine’s Day, Aspen Simone stood on the corner of 7th and Christian streets in South Philadelphia holding a long dowel with a laminated, cutout pigeon on the end. That wasn’t just any pigeon on the end of Simone’s walk leader staff. Primrose the pigeon is how the whole pigeon education enterprise began. Simone’s partner Hannah Michelle Brower took Primrose — at that point a weak, malnourished fledgling found by a neighbor on the sidewalk — to a pigeon rescuer who nursed the young bird back to health. Simone says the rescuer told them the recuperating pigeon, whom Brower had taken to calling Primrose, would do better as a pet rather than being released into the wild, and so the couple kept her. “We just started learning more about her as an individual,” Simone says. “And then we started learning more about pigeon biology and behavior generally. One day, we realized we could predict what pigeons were about to do based on subtle cues that we can read now.” In the summer of 2025, the couple launched their pigeon tours, priced at $25, to share what they had learned. ➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com ✍️ Bernard Brown 📸 Troy Bynum #philadelphia #birding #birdwatching #pigeonlove #dovelove #urbanwildlife
The overgrown lot at 5308 Parrish St. in the Haddi The overgrown lot at 5308 Parrish St. in the Haddington neighborhood of West Philadelphia is getting back to its roots. After sitting abandoned, accumulating trash, construction debris and dumped car parts for over a decade, a new project is in progress to restore the space to a new iteration of its past life as a neat, blooming garden. Nathan McWilliams, however, who has been pruning back invasive species like mulberry and tree of heaven since September, believes it is already an oasis. “It has so much potential. And I just want to bring that garden back to its glory,” says McWilliams, owner and lead consultant at Tree In Me, LLC. ➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com ✍️ Julia Lowe 📸 Photo courtesy of Nathan McWilliams #philadelphia #communitygarden #gardencare #gardenmaintenance #urbangreenspace #urbannature
Events happening in and around Philadelphia this w Events happening in and around Philadelphia this weekend! ➡️ 2026 Philadelphia Bike Expo: The Philly Bike Expo is an annual weekend-long event featuring exhibitors, seminars, presentations and events representing the spectrum of cycling. When: Saturday, March 14th (10:00 AM - 5:00 PM) - Sunday, March 15th (10:00 AM - 4:00 PM) Where: Pennsylvania Convention Center 1101 Arch Street Philadelphia, PA 19107 ➡️ Philly Pigeon Tour: Join us on our Italian Market Pigeon Tour. Your expert pigeon guide will bring you through the historic market and visit nearby established pigeon flocks. You’ll also get to see the market pigeons nesting in old buildings and braving traffic with confidence. When: Saturday, March 14th (11:00 AM - 12:30 PM) Where: Get A Gato 638 Christian Street Philadelphia, PA 19147 ➡️ Tree House Book Swap: Tree House Books is hosting seasonal book swaps this year! Bring your friends, family, kids, friend’s kids, kid’s kids and some books to swap! Don’t forget a tote bag, too, to carry all your new reads. When: Saturday, March 14th (2:00 PM - 5:00 PM) Where: North Philly Peace Park 2226 W. Jefferson Street Philadelphia, PA 19121 #philadelphia #philly #phillysupportphilly #eventsinphilly #phillyevents #phillyevent #philadelphiaevents
For Ana, 19, of Brazil, and Jonathan, 17, of Guate For Ana, 19, of Brazil, and Jonathan, 17, of Guatemala, the southern border of the United States marks the line between life and death. Ana and Jonathan, both clients of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society of Pennsylvania (HIAS PA), a local humanitarian nonprofit that provides legal services to low-income immigrants in the state, now live in Philadelphia — but with looming uncertainty. Ana’s journey began in 2019. Her mother wanted to reunite with Ana’s father, who had left Brazil for Philadelphia a few years earlier for work. Hard-pressed for money, Ana’s mother applied for visas and was denied. Instead of taking the U.S. government’s no for an answer, she hired a “coyote,” or guide, to smuggle her and Ana into America. Despite a difficult relationship with her parents, Ana, then 12, had no choice but to accompany her mother. For Jonathan, gang violence and death threats forced him to leave his homeland. His mother, already living in Philadelphia, was unable to obtain a visa for him and hired a coyote to take him across the border in 2024. Thus, Ana and Jonathan arrived without legal documents. They’re hardly alone in that status. Save The Children, a global nonprofit that works to improve the lives of children, reported that in 2022, the “Department of Health and Human Services received a record 128,904 unaccompanied, undocumented minors, up from 122,731 in the prior year. ➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com ✍️ Constance Garcia-Barrio 📸 Tracie Van Auken #philadelphia #immigration #immigrantstories #immigrantrights #immigrationlaw #immigrationlawyer
It’s not easy to get to the Lankenau Environmental It’s not easy to get to the Lankenau Environmental Science Magnet High School. The school sits on 17 acres at the northwest border of Philadelphia, a pocket of land not served by SEPTA, forcing the district to bus students to and from school. In exchange for the long ride, however, students learn in an expansive outdoor classroom — the neighboring Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education has served as an extension of the grounds since Lankenau became an environmental magnet school in 2005. If the School District of Philadelphia is to be believed, students will be better served by Lankenau closing and having its programs merged into Walter B. Saul High School. (The original plan to merge the school with Roxborough High School was changed.) But “Don’t Sell Lankenau Environmental” was spelled out in bright yellow letters on the T-shirts worn by Lankenau students and teachers at a Feb. 4 open house and community listening session, addressing what they believe is the real reason the district proposes to close the school and send its students to another school. ➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com ✍️ Bernard Brown 📸 Chris Baker Evens #philadelphia #environmentaleducation #environmentalscience #environmentaleducation #educationmatters #magnetschool
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