It was a few hours after a meeting with Grid contributor Constance Garcia-Barrio that I had a realization that startled me. Her hand, the same one I had shaken earlier in the day, had been touched by someone who was born a slave. Our handshake connected me to Constance’s great-grandmother, Rose Wilson Ware, born around
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Equality on Wheels By Alexandra W. Jones Whether you are riding a bike or navigating life, balance is essential. That’s what Taylor Kuyk-White, professional cyclist and the manager of the Bicycle Coalition Youth Cycling program (BCYC), teaches her students. The Philadelphia program, which serves students ages 12 to 18, aims to help build healthy habits
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Five years ago when I graduated from college, everyone assumed that I would be leaving my hometown of Norristown for greener pastures. I was making it out! To their surprise, I came back home for law school and found myself questioning the path often associated with “success.” When I moved back home, I received a call
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In the last five years, the cycling community has seen 93 major injuries and 22 fatalities in Philadelphia County alone—bikers hit while turning corners or riding on the shoulders of cramped roads, even by inattentive drivers backing out of parking spaces. [Editor’s note: These numbers, gathered by PennDOT, report only the crashes in which a
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Several years ago, Katrina Shafer of Bala Cynwyd was afraid to date. ¶ Suffering from fever, hot flashes, painful cramping, fatigue, extreme mood swings, joint pain and depression, she was nervous about embarking on intimate relationships. ¶ She had been diagnosed with a vaginal bacterial infection and treated with three different antibiotics, but her symptoms did
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When a car made a sudden stop in front of him in the bike lane this summer while making his daily commute, Kenyatta James, swerved into trolley tracks. His tire got caught, and he flew off his bike, injuring his knee.Ironically, the accident happened shortly after his company, James Grant Design, was commissioned to provide
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On July 16, a female ruby-throated hummingbird drank from a coral honeysuckle flower at the edge of Tacony Creek Park. We know this because an iNaturalist user with the handle “digitalmirage” took a picture of the bird in the moment before it hummed away. “Recently I’ve been obsessed with hummingbirds,” explains Savannah McHale (a.k.a. digitalmirage), who
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Some silences defy breaking. The hush around contributions of many Black women, especially poor ones, to Philadelphia’s past and present sink into such quiet. They sewed clothes, washed dishes, tended privies and kept the city running, but they rate not a word in most histories. Yet, how would President George Washington’s dinners for diplomats in
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One month out from the Philly Bike Expo, Bina Bilenky still has a lot of work to do. Bilenky, the event’s organizer, is fielding calls from vendors and cementing exhibition logistics for the weekend-long event. On October 27 and 28, she hopes the Pennsylvania Convention Center will be even more packed than it was last year—with
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Filmmaker Rel Dowdell, whose latest film is the documentary Where’s Daddy?, decided he wanted to challenge the media’s prevailing narrative about Black fathers. “I had grown tired of seeing how negatively Black fathers were portrayed in the media—us being deadbeats. You watch these shows like Maury Povich and other shows that show African-American males being in
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