After a year and a half of this global pandemic, I am finally starting to work with clients in their homes again, and I’m realizing that I am not the same person I was before COVID-19 hit. I now have different values regarding what a home is and how it operates. An embroidery I have
More
In January 2019, Grid ran a cover that read “Dumpster Fire.” The article, entitled “A Big Waste,” was about the fact that Philadelphia was burning 50% of its recyclables. Keep in mind this was well before the pandemic, so there were no excuses of extraordinary volume or of a depleted workforce. What the article revealed
More
The heart of the summer is here, and so are hordes of spotted lanternflies. They’re probably sucking on plants outside your window right now. Outside you might step on one if the opportunity presents itself, and, like a lot of Philadelphians, you might go further in a quest to eliminate the invasive bugs. Over the
More
Alexander Torrey’s business idea came to him shortly after he ran out of hand soap. He’d placed an order for another bottle online, and when the replacement arrived, he was dismayed. “It came in a box the size of my kitchen table,” he remembers. He opened the package, pulled out the soap and put it
More
If you pop into Olde Kensington’s Liberty Kitchen these days, a batch of colorful macarons in a glass display may very well catch your eye. They are from Mac’n! by Mari, a one-woman macaron operation run by Mari Terise, a North Philly resident who hails from New York. “It’s striking how many different flavors she
More
As the beginning of the pandemic left people with sleepless nights and unending anxiety, many turned to a natural remedy to help with their dread and gloom: lavender. Lavender sales surged internationally in 2020. The farms that grow these little purple flowers in the Philadelphia area felt the newfound demand. It’s been a busy year
More
Khalil steward first envisioned Philly Farmacy while working on a class project at Delaware Valley University. “I had an idea for a school bus or old ambulance turned into a mobile produce store,” Steward says. The mental image stayed with him, and he made Philly Farmacy a reality in 2019, a year after graduating from
More
By Shari Hersh, Ron Whyte and Emma Wu While many people are experiencing pandemic fatigue, understandably eager for a return to normalcy, the COVID-19 crisis remains far from over. India is experiencing a nightmarish second wave that has led to overcrowded hospitals and critical shortages of lifesaving medical equipment. In its neighboring country Nepal, the
More
It was flooding in the Ablett Village public housing development in Camden’s Cramer Hill neighborhood. It had rained overnight from Saturday, April 24, into Sunday, April 25, and that brought water that pooled in driveways and on the sidewalks running between the area’s long, two-story brick apartment buildings. This is not at all unusual, according
More
Since ancient greece, and maybe earlier, humans have shared stories of wounded healers—people whose own injuries seem to confer upon them the gift of relieving other people’s pain. Multimedia artist Terrence Gore, 56, of West Philadelphia seems such a person. “Doctors gave me 30 days to live at one point,” he says. “That was 15
More