The nine students sitting before their teacher, Andre Coles, differ in age, physical abilities, gender and race, but they come together to grow and build community through the Roots2Rise yoga program. With soft music playing in the background, program director Coles welcomes all. “Sometimes the world seems very unstable,” Coles says in a gentle tone
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In the early 1700s, botanist John Bartram surveyed his farmland abutting the banks of the Schuylkill River in what is now Southwest Philadelphia and had an idea: build a garden for his beloved plants. Approaching its 300th anniversary, the modern Bartram’s Garden is a National Historic Site and a gem of Philadelphia’s park system. But
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On a brilliant October morning in FDR Park, a small group coalesces around a striking figure. Sporting a cap of tight platinum curls, “The Thursday Murder Club” earrings and floral overalls that would provide perfect camouflage in a perennial garden at high season, Lady Danni Morinich welcomes aspiring foragers to her two-hour exploration of wild
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The phone woke Jacqui Johnson, founder and clinical director of Sankofa Healing Studio, from a sound sleep. On the other end of the line, Tinika Hogan, recently released from prison, teetered on the brink of disaster. She was about to do something that would have gotten her kicked out of a halfway house, which could
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Ms. Yalanda Lewis lives in Southwest Philly with her three children — two boys and a 6-year-old girl, the youngest. “My amazing daughter wanted to test me and see if I could handle a child with asthma,” she jokes. “Every month, we were in the emergency room for allergic reactions, asthma attacks and more.” Amid
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During her first class at the local Women Against Abuse shelter where she lived, the little girl stood distant and silent while The Clay Studio teaching artist Nitza Walesca Rosario made a pot. After a few weeks, however, the moist clay and the shapes it took wrought wonders in the child. “Working with clay is
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Earlier this fall, the future of psychedelics in Philadelphia looked promising. Colette Condorcita Schmitt, the founder of Decriminalize Nature Philadelphia, which advocates for expanded access to psychedelic plants and fungi, had been in conversation with the staff of City Councilmember Jim Harrity about a proposal that would decriminalize the use and possession of psychedelics in
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The head of the Wampanoag sachem Metacomet (aka King Philip) sat on a spike at the entrance to Plymouth, Massachusetts, for two decades after his failed uprising against the English colonists was crushed in 1676. The colonists sent his family into slavery in the Caribbean. Metacomet was the son of Ousamequin (aka Massasoit), who rescued
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Asim King hopped off the 32 bus, beat the red light crossing Kelly Drive and fast-walked to the Cosmic Café at 1 Boathouse Row. “Got to be on time,” King said at the café, a bright place that brims with enticing aromas. Like 20 of the café’s 30 employees, King has a developmental disability. Disabled
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In 2021, Ken Conly, director at large for the Philadelphia Canoe Club, was paddling a stretch of the Schuylkill River near the Flat Rock Dam north of Manayunk when he noticed something afoot. A resident of nearby Andorra, Conly says that section of the river has traditionally been “neglected,” with trash accumulating along the river
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