I grew up without a TV. (Insert raised eyebrows here.)My parents decided that, for religious reasons, there would be no television, or even a radio, in our home. They thought the TV would undermine what they were trying to teach us as children. So there was no “Three’s Company,” “MacGyver,” “Jeffersons” or even Saturday morning
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When retired teacher Lynn Robinson learned a natural gas plant was coming to her neighborhood in Germantown, she felt a resounding “No!” jolt through her body.“No, that’s wrong, that can’t be, that’s unacceptable,” she recalled in January in a phone interview with Grid. “You don’t put a power plant in a residential neighborhood, especially not
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Take a closer look at any small portion of the earth and you’ll find detailed ecosystems at work, growing and evolving all on their own, frenzied cycles overlapping each other and building more and more complex systems. Delicate, but balanced. Fragile, but resilient. As humanity develops and expands, it’s all too common to find that
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Walk out of your rowhouse and there they are, incessantly cheeping from the eaves. Outside your office they’ll peck crumbs off the sidewalk or catch a quick bath in a street puddle before the next tire rolls through. Eat lunch on a park bench, and they will watch with their little heads cocked to the
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When Russell Meddin began reading about Mobike in April 2016, he felt he’d come across something big. The private bike-sharing company had begun serving Chinese cities without the use of docking stations. Rather than renting a bicycle from a quarter-block-sized station, and returning it to one, Mobike allows users to leave their bicycles anywhere.
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As a consultant for Moms Clean Air Force, Christine Dolle’s job included urging Congress to support environmental legislation. She has experienced her share of successes as well as fruitless efforts with legislators who won’t oppose even the most extreme anti-environmental measures.So, in fall 2017, when she heard about the nomination of Michael Dourson to become
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Propped up in my cousin’s casket were two baseball cards—Brad Lidge and Dave Hollins, if you are a sports fan. Sean had forgone the typical burial suit and chose instead to wear a gray Phillies hoodie. Much to my regret, I didn’t know my cousin well. In retrospect, his life had many parallels to my own.
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Nakia Maples, better known as Philly Plant Guy, has around 200 plants in his South Philly rowhouse. They're mostly tropicals like palms, philodendrons and long, trailing pothos in hanging baskets. In his “plant room”—where the only unoccupied space is a small sofa—a fountain gurgles away, and humidity-loving ferns hang above. A turtle swims in a
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Welcome to Action Mom, a space where I will share my experiences advocating for change locally and globally. Certainly, wanting to make the world a better and safer place is by no means parent-exclusive. But the responsibility of protecting tiny little lives—in my case a 4-year-old and an 8-year-old—often spurs some dramatic action.As parents, we
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It started with a blank wall that needed a pigeon… or a rubber duck. Tattoo artist and muralist Evan Lovett could see the wall from the window of the Philadelphia Tattoo Collective where he worked in Kensington, just below the Berks El stop.“I got really sick of staring at it, since every time I see
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