For the past two years, Ray Daly has spent many of her days bouncing around Philadelphia’s parks. Pulling up to farmers markets and other events in her Ray’s Reusables van, outfitted as a mobile refill station, she’s made a name for herself by bringing low-waste, plastic-free lifestyle products to neighborhoods across Philly. This week she
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It’s a wet, snowy, bitterly cold Friday in January in Fishtown, as Roya Williams steps into a bright room, lined with colorful artwork. Her dog, Jack, immediately starts to bark and play with a French bulldog named Chuey, the cute, welcoming “guard dog” at Stash Spot. Williams is greeted by founder Debbie Anday, who gives
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The sound of trees being cut down woke Fred C. Cartwright on the morning of February 23. “Saw, crackle, then boom. Then a minute later, saw, crackle, boom. It had us all out of the house looking to see, ‘what is that noise?’” recalls Cartwright.. Cartwright lives on Wyndale Avenue, a well-kept one-block street of
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When the COVID-19 pandemic started in early 2020, entrepreneur Dan Tsao’s multiple businesses were devastated. As the owner of the restaurants EMei in Chinatown and General Tsao’s House in Rittenhouse and the publisher of two Asian weekly newspapers since 2007, Tsao sent out an email to his newspapers’ more than 43,000 email subscribers. The feedback
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Feast jewelry’s Adrienne Manno doesn’t upcycle because it’s trendy or because she’s on some sustainability soapbox. Manno describes the reclaim-and-repurpose aspect of her jewelry making as an organic outgrowth of incorrigible collecting. On her once-frequent travels, Manno would spot and acquire a piece here, an element there, a 1980s faux horn belt at a London
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Recently my family tried out a new card game, Aqua Marooned! We are big fans of old classics like Uno, and we try out new games from time to time, usually when they end up in the gift pile on birthdays or holidays. Aqua Marooned! showed up at the Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Education Center,
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“The only thing you absolutely have to know,” as Albert Einstein once said, “is the location of the library.” When it comes to Philadelphia’s public schools, Einstein’s dictum leaves most students hamstrung, as the district’s number of librarians has declined sharply in recent decades. “In 1991, the School District of Philadelphia had 176 paid librarians,”
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At the first hint of spring in March, thousands of voices ring out from our ponds and wetlands. It might still feel chilly to human skin, but the thawing ground and lengthening days tell hordes of frogs that life is returning to the earth. It’s time to get it on. Each male wood frog, spring
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Consider this scenario: a person asks their partner to clean up the laundry in their shared bedroom. In doing this, the bedroom would be tidy. The person who put the request in has done everything to keep the bedroom tidy for themselves, and even goes so far as to be the consistent caretaker and cleaner
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The FBI kept Hakim’s Bookstore, 210 S. 52nd Street, under surveillance for some time, sniffing around for subversion, says Yvonne Blake, 70. Daughter of Dawud Hakim, the store’s late founder, Blake recounts how her father had done the unthinkable in 1959 by opening an independent Black bookstore, five years before segregation would be outlawed in
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