Several years ago, Chinatown resident Anna Perng was grappling with her child’s autism diagnosis. For friends of hers in similar situations who had language barriers, access to information was even more challenging to find. When people started asking her for help, she became involved with a support group and decided to serve on the Philadelphia
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Stoneleigh: a Natural Garden—the Villanova estate turned rustic public green space profiled in Grid’s May 2018 issue—is the most recent addition to the 36 public gardens that earned Philadelphia the moniker of America’s Garden Capital. But the uniquely beautiful green space wasn’t even open to the public yet when Natural Lands executive director Molly Morrison found
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"So, what do your parents do [for a living]?”When a prominent law firm partner casually posed this question to a group of Penn Law students I was part of, I shifted uneasily. My peers responded with the professions held in the highest esteem in our country, and the most lucrative: They were the sons and
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More than 150 people met at the Gershman Y in April to discuss subtle safety changes to the bike lanes on Spruce and Pine streets. Not everyone was on board.For example, the Society Hill resident who told me that, first, we need to regulate what cyclists wear: Too many cyclists do not wear high-visibility neon
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When I was nursing my second child, I decided to leave her at home and take a one-day trip to Baltimore for a large conference. There was no way I was lugging around a massive electronic pumping system, so I carried along a largely ineffective hand pump and occasionally tried to seek shelter in the
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Around 20 years ago, I was in San Francisco, attending a music conference as a publisher of magazines for independent record stores. The music industry was awash in money, and Warner Bros. was famous for throwing the most decadent parties. This particular year, they had rented the entire island of Alcatraz, the infamous prison, and
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A little over an hour ago, we received this alarming email from the folks at Stoneleigh Garden. Grid readers will recognize Stoneleigh from a story published in the current issue announcing its opening to the public this Saturday. Now, before it's even opened, it is under a serious threat. Below is a letter written by Stoneleigh's
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At the region’s newest public garden, you won’t see ruler-straight rows of color-coordinated petunias, or trees pruned into perfect proportions, or hedges of boxwood trimmed high and tight. At Stoneleigh, native plants get preference, and trees have spent the past century growing wild, unshaped by orchard saws and pruning shears. That’s just what the former owners,
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In 2013, while visiting Iceland, I fell in love with nature. I’m a visual artist and, at the time, I had begun to feel that the direction of my work was calling out for change. I needed to focus my attention on my studio work, so I applied for visual art residencies in the US
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Brian Powell likes to say electric bicycles just sort of happened to him.“I was at the beach. I was riding [my bicycle] from Cape May to Ocean City, I was out on a Saturday and it was beautiful,” the Chestnut Hill resident says. “And I was humping along and some big old guy came flying
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