Looking back at the start of the pandemic, I’ll remember everything closing in March. Walks around my neighborhood took me past locked storefronts with apologies taped to the doors, and almost every email announced a cancellation. I got an email about the City Nature Challenge the evening of March 12. The City Nature Challenge (CNC)
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Photograph by Tyler Holmberg Make Your Bed Story by Alexandra Jones In a city where arable land can be hard to come by, farmers and students from Sankofa Community Farm are building free garden beds for Southwest Philly residents with aspiring green thumbs. The farm, located at Bartram’s Garden, has served as a place where
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Photo courtesy of Overbrook School for the Blind Learning From Nature By Constance Garcia-Barrio At the overbrook school for the Blind (OSB), situated on what was once Lenni Lenape land, staff members seem to have embraced the Native American belief that the Earth is a wise teacher. The school’s new million-dollar M. Christine Murphy Horticulture
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Opportunity for Growth I still remember weeping at 13 years old as I ate my first tasteless sliced tomatoes in America, our new home. My South Asian family reassured me that it would taste better with some Tabasco sauce. I now know that migrant workers in California grow, pick and pack produce that travels thousands of
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Illustration By Sean Rynkewicz Middle of the Road Story By Randy LoBasso You might not be familiar with the work of the late John Forester, but if you ride a bicycle, he’s had a huge impact on your safety and the way you interact with the roadway. The godfather of “vehicular cycling,” Forester promoted the
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In the wake of COVID-19, priorities are shifting. Suddenly, the food supply chain is front and center on our minds. Not surprisingly, local food delivery business Philly Foodworks is scaling up, and Primal Meats is going gangbusters. There is a renewed interest in growing food as well. The subject of our March 2020 cover story,
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Photograph by Darius Rhodes Strong Enough For A Man By Gabrielle Houck Have you ever thrown on a pair of someone else’s slippers to go to the mailbox or put the trash out because you didn’t feel like finding your own? If you have, then you know how downright foolish it feels to wear shoes
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Photograph Courtesy of Delaware Riverkeeper Network An Upstream Battle By Emma Kuliczkowski This march, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network and other environmental organizations like the Clean Air Council, PennFuture, Environment New Jersey and Clean Water Action petitioned the Delaware River Basin Commission to increase regulations on pollutants discharged into the Delaware River for the sake of
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The Volta Way: June 2020 Dear Lois, How are you doing? Like so many, my small business has been closed since mid-March and I am finding myself contemplating how my identity had become so woven into my work. When my business partner and I first decided to close, we burst into a creative frenzy. It
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Bring Back The Ban Story by Siobhan Gleason A look behind Philadelphia’s postponement of its plastic bag ban. Single-use plastic bags are designed for a simple purpose: They carry purchased items from a store to a place of residence. After that they are no longer needed, but unlike paper bags, plastic bags do not quickly
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