At the Goodwill by my house, a regular cast of characters wanders the aisles, searching for hidden gems. Occasionally, there are treasures. The trick is to find them first. Ragtag, we circle, acolytes of good fortune. United in purpose, we summon luck: Work clothes and throwback Hall and Oates records amidst the Conway Twitty; flatware and heavy cutting boards, the wood not dulled by someone else’s blade. Read more at HAD… Published January 6, 2022
Categories: essay
StardustWillie NelsonApril 17, 1978Columbia Records On the back cover of my father’s copy of Stardust, Willie Nelson smiles, soft-focus mountains rising in the distance. It is magic hour, and his paragraphs, drawn drunk, fill the sky with haphazard loops and curves. Most of it is covered in Sharpie, illegible. But if I tilt the record toward the light, his ballpoint script shines through. “We just cling together.” “Apologizing with no mercy.” “Catholicism.” “Baby.” “Youth.” I think about my mother as I […]
Categories: essay
On New Jersey’s aquaculture maps, unfamiliar names shimmer. I am a land dweller, of the shore but not, like a sea glass shard laid across hot sand. City born but relocated, I’m composed of raw edges. I peer close, then closer, but the labels remain obscure: Dry Bay.Obes Thorofare.Tices Shoal.Graveling Point. Unfazed by my interest, the waters lap the shores of hidden inlets, flowing constant in a tongue unknown. Read more… Published August 7, 2020
Categories: essay
I. Denial. Some say it’s a Celtic thing. Others that I’m “kissed by nature.” You’re blessed. Special. That mark is a stroke of luck. Thick and unruly, the first gray hair stakes its claim when I’m 15. Socially anxious with acne to match, this leaves no place to hide. My dark hair is a thicket, and the white emerges in sharp contrast, drawn hastily. Once it starts, the trickle turns to flood. Read more… Published June 12, 2020
Categories: essay
I. Hairline crack. I don’t know why I went south looking for my father, but I did. When I was a freshman in college, I saw his face up in the clouds, a mental imprint strung high over Jersey City. I was driving down the Jersey Turnpike and the image emerged like an apparition: his dark hair inverted to white and a soft smile playing on his lips. It held steady until the wind changed and then started to disintegrate. […]
Categories: essay
I need to get this computer off me, she says. I can’t tell if I’m sick or depressed. Depressed is sick, I tell her, but she says there’s a difference. She would know. Her mom, and her mom’s mom, and the moms before them, all swirled out into that inaccessible distance. One killed herself. One got committed and clothed in a buttermilk dress. The rest toiled on amid children and husbands, saying everything’s F-I-N-E fine. They repeat it like a […]
Categories: fiction
This has been a challenging, no good, difficult 2017. Sure, sure, there has been positivity along the way. (Its persistence is shocking, isn’t it?) Yet there have been plenty of just-plain-tough days, too. And when things are low, when they come just shy of bottoming out, there is a dish I return to for solace: The Casserole. Spoken aloud, the words are an incantation. They bring my best friends into the kitchen when I’m pushing against the empty, a lifeboat […]
Categories: essay, food & drink • Tags: essays, recipes
Anyone familiar with the Philly food world knows that pride and community are the currents that make this an amazing place to eat. Yet, COVID-19 has had visceral effects, from shuttered restaurants and a takeout shift to supply chain disruptions, which have people reconsidering the role of a diversified local food system. With an eye on the future, we reached out to five Philadelphians who play a role in the local food world to take the pulse of the city […]
Categories: food & drink
At first glance, the 40-acre farm at the Natural Lands’ Stroud Preserve in Chester County looks like any other farm. Green corn plants stretch towards sun. Hay fields shimmer at dusk. Upon closer inspection, however, it proves to be an unusual growing project. The preserve is home to a six-year Watershed Impact Trial, a partnership between the Stroud Water Research Center and the Rodale Institute, supported by a $6 million grant from the William Penn Foundation. It investigates farming’s impact […]
Categories: on the water
In the push-pull of the current moment, centering rituals can take on new meaning. For some, this means jogging. Others find solace in the kitchen. Haddonfield-based tea and wellness expert Alexis Siemonsdraws on her earliest memories when called to go inward. “My first memory of tea was my mom drinking it in the morning,” she says. Siemons mom was both a doctor and a mom—in other words, a superwoman deserving of downtime. “When it was nice, she would go outside, have […]
Categories: food & drink
SINCE 2014, THE FREE LIBRARY OF PHILADELPHIA’S Culinary Literacy Center has been a hotspot for innovative food education. Every month’s roster of classes is rooted in the center’s mission to advance literacy through food. In some cases, that’s literal. Since 2015, the Edible Alphabet program has welcomed English language learners, including immigrants and refugees, to the library’s kitchen classroom for free six- to eight-week courses that blend culinary and language lessons. People from around the world prepare a shared meal, led […]
Categories: food & drink
Diners occupy a specific place in the Jersey imagination. One’s connection to a diner isn’t just about food, though that’s part of it. Sitting in a pleather booth, attachments are forged in sugar and salt. There are over-easy eggs and short-stack pancakes, served the same way every time. There are Greek omelets, cheese fries and French dips, savory just like you need them to be. Somewhere along the way, those dishes become part of who we are. More than that, […]
Categories: essay, food & drink
There is a quiet that descends in winter and brings nature into sharp focus. Wind-rustled branches throw shadows. Snow crunches as a trotting deer makes footfalls just beyond view. The world seems just a bit more ethereal. Gazing upon a papercut shadow box from Casey Lynch feels like that. Her images, gathered under the moniker Squirrel Tacos, are surreal yet grounded in a textured ecosystem where animals play out their own narratives. Consider “The Secret Meeting.” It is high winter, […]
Categories: artists
Jenn Hall