On an afternoon in late October, students from Sayre High School were trickling into the Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Center’s community room to take off their waders and to review what they had found in the creek. It was a scene you might expect at any environmental center, but a relatively fresh one now that
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A year ago, advocates of solar energy across Pennsylvania were flying high. Democratic state Rep. Elizabeth Fiedler, whose South Philly district stretches from Pat’s King of Steaks to Lincoln Financial Field, had just pulled off a political Hail Mary: successfully shepherding a clean energy bill through the gridlocked State Capitol. Titled Solar for Schools, the
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For the first time in the utility’s history, Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW) has agreed to hold community engagement meetings to discuss decarbonization. In a settlement agreement approved Oct. 9 by the Public Utility Commission (PUC), PGW agreed not only to a significantly lower rate hike than they initially proposed, but also to begin engaging in
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In June, the School District of Philadelphia’s long-running struggle to protect staff and students from asbestos in its aging buildings came to a head with federal criminal charges and an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to take care of the problem once and for all. The Justice Department alleges that the Philadelphia School District
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A couple of weeks ago, I visited the Comcast Technology Center. It was my first time inside that gleaming skyscraper, designed to knock your socks off with escalators rising above “Exploding Paradigms,” a sculpture of mirrored triangles that the company describes as “a steel vortex heading into the sky.” Just past the top of the
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On Saturday, Oct. 26, North Philly-based artist and children’s books author Alyssa Reynoso-Morris hosted a DIY water purification event at North Philly Peace Park. This was the final event of a three-part series called Stories Grow Here, organized by the Barnes Foundation. The series is a part of Barnes North’s Everyday Places Artists Partnerships, which
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At the turn of the 20th century, Philadelphia was one of the largest textile manufacturing cities in the country. Since the 1950s, the region’s ongoing deindustrialization has led to a sharp decline in textile mills, as well as in the number of farmers and artisans supporting the textile industry. Knowledge of how the industry operates
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For the Elmwood Park Zoo, conservation doesn’t just mean protecting wild animals, like the giraffes, jaguars and monkeys that live at the Norristown facility, but also the planet they inhabit. “We are not just species survival-based, we are also environmental survival-based, so we want to make sure we’re taking care of the planet as best
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When local productions need a feather boa to add to a costume or a vintage phone to serve as a prop, they know just where to look: to their fellow theater colleagues. The aptly named Resource Sharing Committee brings the Greater Philadelphia theater community together to share their materials for productions. The committee’s website has
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Bon Appétit! Pour yourself a glass and enjoy. Natural wineries in the Delaware Valley are producing reds and whites (and some oranges) from grapes grown nearby, rooting their wines — and their drinkers — in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey terroir. Cocoa doesn’t grow here quite yet, but it does in West Africa. Join a
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