Grid Magazine June 2023 [#169]

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T O W A R D A S U S TA I N A B L E P H I L A D E L P H I A

after life The Grid Guide to a Green Hereafter Death Doulas • Aquamation • Green Burials What to Do with your Loved One’s Possessions

Roses bloom in a volunteer-tended cradle grave at The Woodlands Cemetery.

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EDI TO R ’S NOTES

by alex mulcahy

Holding Our Ground managing editor Bernard Brown associate editor & distribution Timothy Mulcahy tim@gridphilly.com copy editor Sophia D. Merow art director Michael Wohlberg writers Kyle Bagenstose Bernard Brown Constance Garcia-Barrio Dawn Kane Sophia D. Merow Bryan Satalino Ben Seal photographers Chris Baker Evens Matthew Bender Troy Bynum Rachael Warriner illustrators Bryan Satalino published by Red Flag Media 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor Philadelphia, PA 19107 215.625.9850 G R I D P H I L LY. C O M

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the likely outcome of our first woman mayor in our city’s long history. However, while Cherelle Parker did say some things that reflected some understanding of the importance of sustainability, the environment was not central to her campaign. She focused on issues like public safety and education — undeniably important to Philadelphia — but it is clear that when it comes to the environment, she will not dream big on her own.

While I am hoping for the best, we need to prepare for the continuation of the status quo, which prioritizes the interests of business over the environmental needs of Philadelphians and barely protects what we have. Any development that can claim, no matter how dubiously, to create more jobs will likely triumph. The construction industry will have its way, even as it places more buildings (and more people living and working in those buildings) in the path of future flooding. Environmental programs will run on inertia — unless, that is, they are powered by an uncompromising advocacy community that keeps dreaming big.

We all know the phrase “death by a thousand cuts.” Well, we need to act like there have been 999 already. One more, even if it’s a tiny stretch of out-of-sight wetlands, is one too many. in this issue we follow the environmental impact we have at the end of our lives. I invite you to read through the articles and ponder your own demise, even if it makes you uncomfortable. The decisions we make about our physical remains and our possessions matter to our communities and to the health of the planet. Thinking about and planning for death won’t stop it from happening (or hasten it, for that matter) but it will make things easier for your loved ones and offer the possibility that your final act will align with your values.

a l e x m u l ca h y , Editor-in-Chief

COV E R P HOTO BY RACHAE L WARRI NER

I L LU S T R AT E D P O R T R A I T BY J A M E S B O Y L E

publisher Alex Mulcahy

t ’ s hard to know which battles to choose. We are confronted with such an overwhelming list of environmental problems (global warming, biodiversity loss, air pollution, environmental racism, sewage flooding into our rivers…) — not to mention all the interrelated social ills such as systemic racism, poverty and unabating gun violence — that we can excuse ourselves for skipping over something as small as a single proposed warehouse development impacting only 1.4 acres of wetland.

And tucked away in an industrial stretch of the Schuylkill River few people even paddle on, it’s not even 1.4 acres that people see or appreciate. I have never visited, and it’s unlikely you have either.

You might say, “Don’t bother protesting this development. Save your time and energy for something more destructive, or something more obviously valuable to protect.

After all, developers are obliged to replace any wetlands they destroy, so it’s really just a lateral step.”

But at this late stage in the game of environmental destruction, even the tiniest nibble is an affront. Wetlands in particular are in short supply, which is a dire problem given how effective they are in soaking up carbon and absorbing flood water. Any city serious about climate change should be factoring that into its planning.

And we shouldn’t just be trying to protect this little 1.4 acres; we should be dreaming big, plotting how we can regain the tens of thousands of acres that used to line our rivers and creeks.

Big dreams are in short supply in the corridors of power today. In Harrisburg the fossil fuel industry enjoys continued support from both parties, even as Shell’s new ethane cracker in Beaver County racks up permit violations and an underfunded Department of Environmental Protection faces a mountain of abandoned and noncompliant gas wells.

Here in Philadelphia we, for all intents and purposes, elected our next mayor during the primary last month. At Grid we celebrate

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sponsored content The Weavers Way Vendor Diversity Initiative provides assistance, support and shelf space for makers and artisans who are people of color.

Amira Abdul-Wakeel targets health-conscious shoppers with Amira’s Delites.

Baker’s Delight

Entrepreneur finds that second time’s the charm for launching her bakery

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he year was 1970. The Jackson 5’s “I’ll Be There” was a number-one hit.

The New York Knicks were the NBA champs. And Amira Abdul-Wakeel had made her first pound cake.

Although she was extremely proud of her creation, her pride was quickly tempered when her mother tried it and proclaimed, “Sweetie, this is the best cornbread I’ve ever tasted.” With a mother’s judgment as motivation, Abdul-Wakeel vowed that she would set out to be a world-class baker.

Also popular at the time was Book-ofthe-Month Club. But while her friends were exploring young teen fiction, Abdul-Wakeel was lining her bookshelves with cookbooks ranging from “The Joy of Cooking” to “The New York Times Cookbook,” which are both still part of her current library of more than 350 cookbooks.

Abdul-Wakeel continued baking for friends and family into the new millennium, and in the early 2000s decided she wanted to make a real go at becoming a professional baker. When she decided to professionalize, however, hardships arose.

“Unfortunately, I had been working for 4 GR GRID ID PPHHILI LLY.CO LY.COMM JU JU NENE 2 02023 23

other people,” Abdul-Wakeel recalls, “and they weren’t so happy about me starting a business because that meant I was no longer working for them.”

Starting a business in general is tough, but starting a business in Philadelphia — a city accomplished at tying new businesses in knots with red tape — added another layer of challenges. Abdul-Wakeel recalled how difficult it was to understand how to get a business license, how to get the correct insurances and how to get into a commercial kitchen to satisfy health requirements.

So she gave in and went back to school.

She got a degree in social work and later a degree in education from the University of Pennsylvania. Although most people would be completely content with such achievements, Abdul-Wakeel just could not deny that baking was her true passion.

Finally, in 2017, she was ready to leave education and give baking another shot.

This time she was able to find support from the Enterprise Center in West Philadelphia, which works with emerging entrepreneurs to overcome the hurdles that tripped Abdul-Wakeel up a few decades

back. Just after she launched her business, Amira’s Delites, her alma mater invited her to bake vegan cookies for a cafeteria serving a whole dorm’s worth of students.

“Most people taste my stuff and are like, ‘Why are these buttery?’ Well, that’s the olive oil,” Adbul-Wakeel explains. “Quality ingredients give you a quality product.”

In spite of that quality, Penn did not renew her contract a year later. So AbdulWakeel took that as yet another learning experience and diversified her sales outlets. She went back to the university dining system, landing a contract with Drexel University in 2019. She expanded to the Fairmount Farmers Market and grocery stores such as the Weavers Way Co-op, just as the pandemic set in.

What drew Abdul-Wakeel to Weavers Way in particular was that they, in her words, “have my customer.” Those who frequent cooperative grocery stores like Weavers Way tend to be health conscious — appreciative of treats such as Amira Delites’ vegan muffins — and attentive to quality.

“I like to say that I know my chickens,” Abdul-Wakeel says with a laugh. “I know my miller, and I know that the Weavers Way shopper values that.”

And that value is recognized not just by the shoppers at Weavers Way, but also by the staff. What started as one-off purchase orders of Amira’s Delites has now turned into a weekly standing order. And for Abdul-Wakeel, the ease of communications, the on-time payments and the general support and positivity of the staff now provide what she needed so badly when she first started.

“I feel like I can grow within Weavers Way, and as a new entrepreneur, it’s really important to me that I get to grow, that I get to make mistakes and improve on that. My goal is to be one of the premier items in the brand new store [Weavers Way is opening in Germantown].” ◆ P HOTO G RAP H BY CHRIS BAKER EVENS

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urban naturalist

Unwanted Guests How a pro gets critters out of human homes — and keeps them out by bernard brown

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hiladelphia is a city of old houses that offer, as anyone who lives in anything from a twostory row house to a grand Victorian knows, plenty of gaps where wildlife can slip in. Bats, flying squirrels and especially gray squirrels and raccoons can end up making a home in old crawl spaces, chimneys and in little cavities you didn’t know were there until you heard something chewing away at the wood and plaster (ask me how I know).

You might be inclined to call animal con6 GRID P H IL LY.CO M JU NE 2 0 23

trol, but they focus on cats, dogs and other pet species and deal with wild animals only when one is visibly sick or in the living space of a home. If the animal is causing a problem anywhere else on a property, like in the walls or the roof, licensed wildlife nuisance agencies come to the rescue.

I called up Mark Prusaitis, owner of Wildman Wildlife Solutions, to learn more about how to deal with wild animals causing problems in human homes, and, ultimately, how to be good neighbors. This interview was edited for clarity and length.

What are the critters you deal with most often? In the Philadelphia area it’s mostly

squirrels and raccoons. Squirrels are number one.

As far as raccoons, they’re getting into people’s chimney shafts, but they like row homes with connecting porch roofs and the areas of soffit returns [a horizontal surface connecting the edge of an eave to the exterior wall, sometimes creating a hollow space wildlife can move into] on single homes. Raccoons push into that. A lot of times it will start with one problem, like a bird using a hole.

A squirrel comes along and makes the hole a little bigger, and then a raccoon will come along and make the hole even bigger, and then the raccoon will see that dark area and go rip things apart. They’re just looking for a shelter to raise their young.

P HOTO G RAP HY BY TROY BYNUM

Mark Prusaitis explains how oneway exits, like a plastic tube meant for bats, installed where animals are living in a house can help solve wildlife nuisance problems.

a skunk in your backyard. You could call us and we’ll come the next day and never see it. Skunks are transient. In Pennsylvania unless the wild animal is an actual nuisance to the property owner, we’re not allowed to handle the animal. It has to damage property or pose a risk to residents.

What do you do with the animals that you have to trap? This is why I use exclusion

methods, one-way doors [installed to allow an animal to leave but not come back in], etc. because the PA Game Commission rules are that anything that is a rabies vector species has to be euthanized. The only way we could release them would be right on the property. You can imagine after someone pays $2,000 to have the raccoon removed from their property, they don’t want them released right in front of their door. So they have to be euthanized.

Any animal that is not a vector species we are allowed to relocate, and anywhere we release them has to be gameland [land open to hunting and trapping]. You can’t just go release them in Fairmount Park. That’s why we use one-way doors, so we don’t have to translocate them. The survival rate for translocated squirrels is extremely low.

How much does it usually end up costing to deal with animals in someone’s roof or walls?

When an animal gets into your house, all of a sudden you have to take care of all these repairs you’ve been meaning to get to for years.”

— mark prusaitis, owner of Wildman Wildlife Solutions

It seems like half your job is home repair.

More than that. It’s like 70 percent. We’re problem solvers. Our clients have wildlife conflicts, and our job is to resolve the wildlife conflicts. I don’t go in to catch and kill wildlife and we’re good. I go into the structure to find out why wildlife are attracted to the structure. I get into habitat modifi-

cation. Wildlife are looking for food, water and shelter. I try to resolve the main thing wildlife are looking for in the structure.

Do you get a lot of calls from people about animals just being there, like someone annoyed that a fox is on their lawn? Sometimes we’ll

get calls for issues that are nonissues, like

Usually it ends up being about $1,500 for an exclusion, depending on the amount of work that needs to be done.

We specialize in doing custom metal fabrication. A lot of areas of row houses have exposed wood, and we cap those areas with metal to have a permanent solution.

We modify homes so they’re animal proof.

We’re doing vent covers, covering exposed wood. You’ve got to get up on the roof. We install chimney caps. It ends up being a lot of work, and it’s dangerous work.

It’s definitely an expensive service, and it’s unexpected. When an animal gets into your house, all of a sudden you have to take care of all these repairs you’ve been meaning to get to for years. ◆ J UN E 20 23 G R I DP HILLY.COM 7

water

Wetlands vs.

Warehouses The decline of the oil industry along the lower Schuylkill River could offer tidal wetlands room for a comeback by bernard brown

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You’ve got to remember that the mouth of the Schuylkill back in the day was all marshes.”

— david velinsky, Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University dominated the mud that was exposed and then inundated twice a day by the rising and falling water.

Those wetlands are almost entirely gone now, though you can find remnants along some tributaries and a larger swath at the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge.

The Delaware and Schuylkill have been working rivers for centuries, which means their banks have largely been built up and hardened with timber, concrete and riprap (rocks and building debris). Point Breeze on the Schuylkill (confusingly, Point Breeze the geographical feature is across the river from the better-known Point Breeze neighbor-

hood) was once surrounded by tidal wetlands, all of which were filled in as the area industrialized.

“You’ve got to remember that the mouth of the Schuylkill back in the day was all marshes,” says David Velinsky, a scientist at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University who studies the region’s wetlands. It’s hard to say exactly how many acres were once wetlands, considering that their destruction was well underway by the time anyone started to document them.

It is easier to say how much of the freshwater tidal wetlands of our region remain, thanks to careful surveying dating back to

D U B O I S A N D A S S O C I AT E S

red-bellied turtle basking on a log next to a pocket of wetlands at Point Breeze on the Schuylkill River doesn’t know that it is threatened, legally speaking, or that its home is tiny compared to the once-expansive ecosystem that used to stretch far beyond its current territory.

The controversy over a planned warehouse development that could impact the turtle’s habitat presents an opportunity to consider what wetlands could accomplish in the face of a changing climate and the threats global warming poses to the Delaware Valley.

The pocket of wetlands where the turtle was basking formed alongside an oil storage facility where earlier tidal wetlands had been filled in. BP Point Breeze, LLC has applied for permits to fill in 1.4 acres of the wetland as it converts the oil storage facility to a warehouse. The Clean Air Council has called for the plans to be rejected, saying that the project could disturb toxic chemicals that leaked into the site’s soil over the decades it was a petrochemical storage facility, that it could worsen flooding and that it was damaging the wetlands, which are habitat for red-bellied turtles.

Red-bellied turtles (also called red-bellied “cooters”), mostly-black turtles with red-orange undersides and faint red bars on the top of their shells, find themselves without much habitat left in Pennsylvania.

They are creatures of waterways with muddy bottoms — marshes, rivers and ponds of the Mid-Atlantic — and that habitat in the Keystone State almost entirely overlaps with Philadelphia and its suburbs. Before European colonization, the red-bellies of what is now Southeastern Pennsylvania would have lived in the rivers and many of the creeks of the coastal plain, which were generally flanked by tidal wetlands, where vegetation like wild rice and spatterdock

Below: This northern red-bellied turtle’s home could be impacted by a proposed warehouse.

Opposite: Point Breeze has lost its wetlands to industrial development, like the rest of the lower Schuylkill River shoreline.

Philadelphia USGS Quadrangle Map

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Job No.: D2285.001 the 1970s: about 2,300 hectares (about 5,700 storms fueled by a hotter and wetter atmocannot: they can increase their elevation as Scale: 1 in = 2,000 ft acres), according to Velinsky. sphere. They also absorb some of the force sea levels rise. The Delaware carries in its 7/28/2022 West Passyunk Avenue Development Site Federal and state laws that require develof the water driven into the shore by coastwaters tiny bits of theDate: land upstream in the Figure 2 City of Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, PA Drawn By: ED opers to replace, or “mitigate,” any wetlands al storms. A study looking at the impact of form of sediment, and as the current slows This map was developed using Geographic Information Systems Digital Data. This map is for visual display purposes only and all locations are approximate.

01\Phase II Survey\Quad_2.mxd they destroy work to preserve the area of salt marshes in Ocean County, NJ, during at the river’s mouth, the sediment adds to wetlands currently remaining. But it is worth Superstorm Sandy estimated that they prethe mud at the bottom, trapped by the vegstepping back and asking bigger questions vented $625 million of flood damage. etation. As the average water level rises, so about how warehouses and wetlands meet Carbon dioxide would stream from the does the marsh. The rate of sea level rise our needs, and which we need more of today. exhaust pipes of the trucks pulling into and might someday outpace the marsh, but for A warehouse can help get more stuff out of the warehouse that BP Point Breeze now it’s keeping up, according to Velinsky. consumers want to buy (once the right ad plans to build. For a city struggling to cut its Over a hundred years ago the wetlands of hits their eyeballs, anyway) delivered fastcarbon emissions, wetlands can be a critical the mouth of the Schuylkill were sacrificed er, but the wetlands are working hard, too. tool, burying carbon in the muck beneath to industry. Today, the region’s transition They act as sponges for pollution, essenthe plants. “If you look at carbon burial away from petrochemical facilities, such tially burying it in the mud. They provide globally, the amount per acre … in a tidal as the PES refinery site and the tank farms habitat for wildlife (including red-bellied wetland is far higher than what you find in of Point Breeze, offers an opportunity to turtles), but they also act as a buffer against a forest or other ecosystem,” Velinsky says. reimagine what use of the landscape can the impacts of climate change. They can The tidal marshes of the Delaware Basin best serve Philadelphia. Is it warehouses help soak up water from ever-more-intense can also do something that warehouses or wetlands? ◆

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healing city

For the Love of Black Boys Advocates and mentors step up to help Black male youth succeed

by constance garcia-barrio

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was a student at King [High School] when I heard about the Men [Who Care of Germantown (MWCOG)],” says Jewel Gadson, 19. “I was a hothead. Sometimes I didn’t go to class,” says Gadson, the third oldest of 15 siblings.

Gadson, like his brothers and sisters, was in and out of foster care from an early age.

When he was in middle school, his mother and father lost all parental rights. “At the weekly meetings, [the Men] talked about gun violence, about getting more education, taking pride in ourselves.”

After graduation, Gadson, who has worked in summer camps, stores, a restaurant and other jobs, continued to be mentored by MWCOG, a Northwest Philly nonprofit. “I’m currently getting ready to go to college, to Morgan State [University] for nursing,” he says.

While MWCOG provides mentoring and 10 to 15 $500 college scholarships per year, another Black men’s group will soon hit the streets to help protect young people. In the wake of the March 28 gunning down of 15-year-old Devin Weedon, a “rising star” at Nicetown’s Simon Gratz High School, the Black Male Community Council of Philadelphia (BMCCPhilly) has developed a strategy to help safeguard Weedon’s fellow students.

“We have a security plan to help protect women, children and elders at key places in Nicetown, including Gratz, the Steele [Elementary] School, and the Germantown and Windrim Transportation corridor,” says Stanley Crawford, founder and executive director of BMCCPhilly. “Having a Black male presence can help deter violence.”

The media often portray Black men as absent from the lives of Black boys, but Crawford and other local African heritage men beg to differ.

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Joel Austin, founder, president and CEO of Daddy University, Inc., helps fathers learn how to parent.

P HOTO G RAP H BY CHRIS BAKER EVENS

“Black males are trying to do right by their children,” says Bilal Qayyum, president of the Father’s Day Rally Committee, which he founded in Philly in 1990. “We help African American males faced with the social, economic, educational and relationship challenges [of parenting]. We get fathers involved in the lives of their children.”

The stereotype of disappearing Black fathers seems to have staying power, but one study takes a more nuanced look at Black dads.

“While Black fathers are less likely than white and Hispanic fathers to marry their

child’s mother, many Black fathers continue to parent through cohabitation and visitation, providing caretaking, financial and inkind support,” according to “The Myth of the Missing Black father,” published by the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse, a U.S. government agency, in 2009.

The presence of African heritage men in the lives of their sons and other Black boys helps give these children a fighting chance.

African American boys face crippling rates of poverty, with a third of them living in that condition, says “Brotherly Love: Health of Black Men and Boys in Philadelphia,” a 2019

report by the Candid Foundation of New York City. In addition, Black youths are 83% more likely than white youths to become homeless, says a 2019 estimate from the Homeless Youth Connection in Phoenix, Arizona. Regarding education, the Schott Foundation found in a 2015 study that “national public high school graduation rates are 59% for Black male students, 65% for Latino males, and 80% for White, non-Latino males.” As for emotional wellbeing, “the suicide risk among Black boys between the ages of five and eleven was two to three times higher than that of white boys,” according to a 2018 study published in the

I remind [mentees] that it takes strength to say you need help.”

—david chaney, 100 Black Men Journal of the American Medical Association.

Some Black men in Philly have stepped up to the challenge of those steep odds.

From starting a school for fathers to guarding street corners, African American men have been moved to act for the love of Black boys. Their collective work covers boys from birth through young adulthood.

In 2004, Joel Austin, a Black father, launched Daddy University, Inc., whose workshops show fathers, most of them men of color, how to parent children from infancy to adulthood.

“It’s the oldest male parenting education company in the U.S.,” says Austin, president and CEO of the Center City firm. “We educate fathers by providing information, services, advocacy, products and training.

We get married dads, single dads, divorced dads and stay-at-home dads. We have classes online that cover topics like child development but also custody and support to help ensure that fathers have a role in their children’s lives.”

The curriculum follows a child’s growth.

Freshmen classes focus on children from birth to age 5, explains Austin, a doula or person trained to offer emotional and physical support during birth and the days immediately following it. Daddy University emphasizes J UN E 20 23 G R I DP HILLY.COM 1 1

healing city

Black males are trying to do right by their children.”

— bilal qayyum, president of the Father’s Day Rally Committee

the practical with choices like cooking classes for dads.

“We provide information that helps fathers cope with and understand almost any parenting situation,” Austin says.

While Austin focuses on fathers, Barbershop Books uses Black barbershops, a neighborhood oasis for African American men, to encourage boys to become good readers.

“We’re raising up a new narrative, a different view of Black boys,” says Alvin Irby, who has a master’s degree in education as well as one in public health. “I was teaching first grade in the Bronx when I went into a barbershop and saw a little boy, one of my students, restless, waiting to have his hair cut. I thought, ‘That boy should be practicing his reading.’ Today, more than 82% of Black male 4th grade students in the U.S. are not proficient in reading,” Irby says. “Low reading achievement among Black boys today will produce Black men ill-prepared to compete 12 GR ID P H IL LY.CO M JU NE 2 0 23

in the workforce of tomorrow.”

Irby asked the barber if he could bring in a stack of books for boys. With the barber’s consent, Irby put the books on a shelf where boys could reach them. Thus, Barbershop Books, a national literacy nonprofit, began.

The current 203 participating barbershops nationwide include four in West Philly and 30 in North Philly, says spokesperson Sheena Brockington.

“We curate our books,” Irby says.

“They’re new — Black boys deserve to read new books — and recommended by the boys themselves. Some of them have Black protagonists, but not necessarily. They reflect the full humanity of Black boys. ‘Captain Underpants’ and ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ are favorites.” Irby adds that he partners with individuals, city governments, school districts and library systems in his work.

“Barbers are encouraged to get involved,” says Irby, also a stand-up comic. “Ideally, we

want barbers to initiate the conversation about reading when they have the boy in the chair.

You have that Black male reading role model. When the boys read more, they’re going to have a bigger world.”

Grassroots groups like MWCOG mentor Black boys from kindergarten through high school with its programs at Emlen Elementary School, Roosevelt Elementary School, and Martin Luther King High School, all in Northwest Philadelphia.

“We began in 2011, cleaning weeds six feet tall off vacant lots,” says Joe Budd Jr., president and co-founder of MWCOG. “Sometimes drugs were hidden there. Some guys hanging on the corner started helping us.

You have to be a member of the community and also be consistent to build trust. Organically, our focus grew to include education.

Now organizations who want to make a difference come to us because we’re in schools.

If you’re from North Philly and you want to replicate our program there, I’ll train you.”

MWCOG’s services include a free summer day camp and food distribution. The food helps build relationships with families, a key to assisting students, Budd says.

“The narrative has always been that Black parents are not around because they’re not interested, but some have two or three jobs.”

Mentoring stands at the heart of MWCOG’s work.

“We have a program, ‘Real Talk,’ once P HOTO G RAP H BY CHRIS BAKER EVENS

G R O U P S H OT: C O U R T E S Y O F T H E FAT H E R ’ S DAY R A L LY C O M M I T T E E

Left: Members of the Father’s Day Rally Committee, an organization that helps fathers get involved in the lives of their children.

a week for an hour at each school, where students can talk about what’s on their minds. It gives African American boys a voice in a world that otherwise tries to silence them,” Budd says. The boys can speak in confidence. “We have a resource center. If you’re being teased because your clothes are raggedy, we can help. If you don’t know how to fill out a job application, we can help.”

Above all, “Real Talk” helps address gun violence.

“You’ve got to start talking about gun violence when they’re 10, 11, or younger.

‘Catch ’em before the street catches ’em,’ is how the saying goes. We need more neighborhood pop-pops [grandfathers] out here with us,” says Budd, who relies on partners like Philabundance, Enon Baptist Church and other groups. “It’s frustrating being a Black male and having Black children that could be murdered.”

No one knows better than BMCCPhilly’s Stanley Crawford.” Crawford’s son, William Aboaje Samir, was fatally shot in 2018.

“His murder led me to start BMCCPhilly, to honor his life,” says Crawford, whose group aims to “transform hotspots into peaceful, clean and safe environments.”

“During the pandemic, we were at Richard Allen Homes, distributing food and cleaning up consistently. You have to know how to be amongst [Black youth]. You have to build trust,” says Crawford, a former dancer with the Arthur Hall African Dance Ensemble and a retired commercial and industrial fire inspector for the City of Philadelphia. BMCCPhilly has a victim impact program, a mentoring program and a same-day program where you work and get paid on the same day, Crawford says.

Above all, BMCCPhilly promotes public safety in the Black community.

“I’m not saying our [safety] plan for Nicetown will stop gun violence, but it can be a deterrent.”

Just as neighborhood groups can assist in creating more security and life choices for Black boys, so too can national nonprofits like 100 Black Men of America, Inc. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, this civic organization has more than 100 chapters in cities across the country, including Philadelphia. Founded in 1963, 100 Black Men

seeks “to educate and empower Black children and teens,” according to their website.

Mentoring, programs and scholarships assist in achieving that goal.

“I’m a life coach,” says David Chaney, one of the group’s mentors. Chaney’s office is in Vaux Big Picture High School, located at 2300 Master Street. “I help young people find internships,” says Chaney, noting that many of the jobs are in construction, thanks to a partnership with Home Builders Institute, which provides training in trade skills.

His background makes him a good mentor, says Chaney, who considers mentoring a lifelong relationship.

“I grew up at 29th and Oxford and also with my grandparents in Georgia,” Chaney says. “I never met my father. He was murdered. My experience later with my grandfather’s passing allows me to relate to young men [who’ve had losses]. I suffered from depression, from anxiety. I suggest psychological counseling [to mentees] when it seems appropriate. I remind them that it takes strength to say you need help. Black boys and young men want to feel important, to feel that they matter, but so many messages in the media tell them that they don’t.”

100 Black Men’s Leadership Academy, for boys from the second through the 12th grades, focuses on self-awareness, peer mentoring, conflict resolution and other essential skills. It meets on the first and third Saturdays of the month in tandem with the Parent Academy that tackles topics like “How do we support our sons as they come of age?” In addition, the Philly chapter offers Manhood 101 for men ages 18 to 29. A health-and-wellness component, scholarships, a Black history challenge and other programs round out 100 Black Men’s approach.

Black men’s national fraternal organizations like Groove Phi Groove Social Fellowship, Inc., begun at Morgan State University in Baltimore in 1962, also work to guide Black youth. An alternative to traditional fraternities, Groove Phi Groove is “in the business of creating intelligent and effective leaders,” says Khary Atif, the international secretary for the fellowship, which has chapters in Nigeria, the Dominican Republic and other countries. In the Philly chapter, the goal of educating thoughtful men translates into the Leadership Academy, which consists of a series of classes at the Finley Recreation Center, located at 7701 Mansfield Avenue.

“Boys from the ninth through 12th grades

take part in our nine-week lecture series,” says Atif, retired after 37 years as a childabuse investigator in Philly’s Department of Human Services. “We cover topics like personal finance and Black history. The kids also design and carry out a community service project. We take the kids to the theater — the Arden does lots of kids’ programs — and to baseball games and other activities.”

The talks and trips prime youth to join bus tours to historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), Atif says.

“It’s not unusual to find kids who haven’t traveled outside of the city,” says Atif, who grew up in West Philly near 60th Street. “We take them to Morgan State, Bowie State, Lincoln, Cheyney and other schools. Some of them didn’t know that such opportunities were available to them. Sometimes it pulls them out of negative activities. We provide scholarships for program participants. We have a 72% graduation rate for kids who take the bus tour,” says Atif, adding that other Black fraternal organizations are doing similar work nationwide.

Groove Phi Groove member Clayton Graves recalls being drawn to the organization about 10 years ago when he was “a reckless young man, 21 or 22 years old, at Cheyney.” A chaplain’s assistant in the Army Reserve, he also works in security at a charter school. “The mentoring I received has shaped my parenting,” says the North Philly native and father of four. “I’m more patient, more aware of the importance of early learning. Mentoring is generational.

I still turn to my mentors when I have parenting questions.”

The mentoring Graves gives back seems to have a long reach.

“I do mentorship for the neighborhood,” says Graves, who lives in Mount Airy. “A lot of kids don’t have two parents at home. I guide kids in making choices, I watch them grow. Our group passes on mentoring. It’s what we do.”

These local Black men’s groups build possibilities into the lives of Black boys through being generous with their time, empathy and sometimes money from their own pockets.

For young men like Martin Luther King graduate Jewel Gadson, that moral and financial support made the difference.

“We’re paying for him to attend a summer program at Morgan,” says MWCOG’s Budd. “It’s part of the scholarship we’re giving him.” ◆ J UN E 20 23 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 13

EARTH, WIND, AND MIRE 14 GRID P H I L LY.CO M JU NE 2 0 23

At former PES refinery, pollution concerns persist under the surface story by kyle bagenstose • photography by matthew bender

I

n the 340 years since Philadelphia’s founding, the city’s landscape has constantly shifted, as waves of development and redevelopment shipped out with the old and in with the new.

Unfortunately, on many occasions across the city, transitions went terribly wrong.

Consider Logan Triangle, a 35-acre site in North Philadelphia where developers filled in a creek bed with ash and cinder in the 1920s, then built entire neighborhoods over it. Half a century later many were sinking, requiring the buy-out and demolition of nearly 1,000 homes and devastating the community.

Miles away on the far southern end of the city lies Eastwick, a neighborhood where residents have battled for decades with dangers from the long-shuttered Clearview Landfill Superfund site, along with floodwaters from the adjacent Cobbs and Darby creeks.

But recent years have brought Philadelphians face to face with its latest and largest redevelopment challenge: the former Philadelphia Energy Solutions oil refinery, a 1,300acre site hugging the banks of the Schuylkill River on the southern half of the city, where heavy industry has reigned since the 1860s.

As chronicled in Grid’s April issue (#167), a 2019 explosion at the refinery forced its closure and sale to new owner Hilco Redevelopment Partners, who is pursuing a plan to convert the site to a major logistics and life sciences hub it calls the Bellwether District.

But running alongside plans for the land are questions literally hiding beneath its surface.

What toxic hazards do the site’s land, air and waterways hold? Could they harm humans and animals, now or in the future?

And how thoroughly will those responsible for ensuring a safe cleanup act?

For Russell Zerbo, advocate for the environmental nonprofit Clean Air Council,

plans so far are cause for concern. “[Hilco is] clearly focused on the redevelopment of the facility, when they really need to be focused on the cleanup,” he claims.

But Hilco counters that such concerns are unwarranted. Company representatives note it has no plans to build residences on the site. The city’s air is cleaner without the ongoing refinery operations, they argue, and they say they are working with regulators to ensure a safe redevelopment.

“By redeveloping a 150-year-old former refinery, this transformational project inherently improved the surrounding environment on the day of acquisition,” Amelia Chassé Alcivar, executive vice president of corporate affairs for Hilco, wrote in a statement. “Through our extensive remediation and sustainable approach to redevelopment, we are ensuring that this 1,300-acre site will be transformative for the environment and quality of life in South and Southwest Philadelphia.”

A complicated cleanup, a toxic alphabet soup Care to take a peek under the contaminated hood of the former PES site? Just how much time do you have?

More than 150 years of heavy industry at the site have led to the creation of tens of

thousands of pages of environmental records, many created after 2003, when former owner Sunoco entered into an agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other regulators to conduct a large investigation and cleanup at the site.

On a webpage created by Evergreen Resources Management, Sunoco’s corporate subsidiary for cleanups, scores of documents chronicle contamination spread across 11 distinct areas within the site’s vast acreage, including tank farms where petroleum and other products were stored, impoundment and chemical storage areas, and the aquifer underlying the entire site.

Complicating matters is a concurrent cleanup effort undertaken by Hilco, which holds responsibility for all spills and contamination since 2012, and which houses its own separate repository of documents online.

James Mullison, a West Philadelphia resident who by day works as an Amtrak engineer and by night sifts through the mountains of cleanup materials as a volunteer for environmental organization Philly Thrive, says it’s enough to make anyone dizzy.

“It’s a massive amount of information and truly daunting, even for folks that have a technical background,” Mullison said.

Still, certain concerns have bubbled to the surface. Environmental advocates, regulators and summaries from the document libraries call particular attention to benzene, a cancer-causing compound that wafts off of petroleum products and into the air, as well as lead, one of the most harmful substances found in the modern world and a common gasoline additive until

By redeveloping a 150-year-old former refinery, this transformational project inherently improved the surrounding environment on the day of acquisition.”

— amelia chassé al civar, executive vice president of corporate affairs for Hilco J UN E 20 23 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 1 5

it was phased out late last century.

Zerbo also notes a toxic “alphabet soup” of other petroleum-connected contaminants at the site, such as toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene, which, when combined with benzene, are referred to collectively as BTEX. Mullison and Zerbo are both watching intently as Hilco and Evergreen engage with regulators on the investigation and cleanup of all of these toxic substances. Under a joint regulatory program, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is serving as lead overseer of the cleanup, with other state and federal agencies like the EPA, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the PA Fish and Boat Commission riding shotgun.

But both Mullison and Zerbo remain concerned that an expedient redevelopment of the site will take priority over a proper cleanup. Even though investigation and contamination of the 1,300-acre site is ongoing, nothing precludes Hilco from starting to build the massive warehouses they envision for the site if the City issues construction permits, according to the DEP. Indeed, Hilco originally planned to begin vertical construction on the site early this year, a timeline that it has now pushed to the back half of 2023. Mullison worries about what might get left behind in the dust.

“With Hilco being very persistent about an aggressive construction schedule … is that holding us back from a real remediation?” he asks.

But Hilco counters that starting redevelopment and remediating the site are not mutually exclusive. The company notes Sunoco has been performing some remediation of the site, such as groundwater cleanup, for decades, and will likely be doing so for decades more. Construction doesn’t interfere with those activities, Hilco says.

“There isn’t a reason why we can’t develop above it,” a company official told Grid.

Lead in the earth There are two big problems with lead.

One, it’s extremely toxic. And two, once it contaminates soil, it doesn’t break down or really go anywhere, leaving a persistent long-term health risk.

In one of its first and most significant moves after purchasing the site, Hilco in 2020 released a plan for how it would address massive amounts of soil contamination at the former refinery.

16 GRID P H IL LY.CO M JU NE 2 0 23

Chemicals from more than a century of oil refining are likely seeping into the Schuylkill River from the former Philadelphia Energy Solutions site.

To summarize: bury it.

Swiftly approved by regulators, Hilco’s plan is to redistribute soil across the site, moving clean or less-contaminated soils on top of those that are highly contaminated by lead and other substances. When paired with new additional barriers such as building foundations, parking lots and roadways, the redistribution of soil effectively encapsulates the worst sites of soil contamination to standards acceptable by law for nonresidential areas.

Hilco has not yet executed the plan, officials said. It has instead spent the past four years deconstructing massive amounts of holding tanks, pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure, then investigating the soil underneath to further inform the redistribution plan. The company says that, once executed, the plan will have an additional benefit of lift-

ing all areas out of the floodplain.

But one key limitation is that, at present, Hilco is only working to achieve contamination levels in surface soils acceptable for industrial use — which is a less demanding standard than for residential or recreational uses. Because such uses are currently deed-restricted at the site, according to the DEP, Hilco would have to take additional action to make the site safe for publicly sought uses like the extension of the Schuylkill River Trail or other recreational areas.

There is no indication so far that Hilco intends to do so. However, the company suggested to Grid it has not written off any such possibilities. It added that it remains generally supportive of open space in the area, issuing a letter in February to U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg expressing support for a propos-

Russell Zerbo of the Clean Air Council gets into the weeds near the former PES Refinery site.

[Hilco is] clearly focused on the redevelopment of the facility, when they really need to be focused on the cleanup.”

— russell zerb o, Clean Air Council al to extend the Schuylkill River Trail from Bartram’s Garden to Passyunk Avenue — but off-site along the river’s western bank.

“While there are significant deed restrictions on the site that we inherited upon our acquisition, we are committed to working with our community partners and all stakeholders to determine how The Bellwether District can best integrate with the South and Southwest Philly community,” Alcivar said.

Benzene in the air Perhaps the greatest potential danger to public health from the former PES site is

one that travels through the air: the prospect of cancerous benzene compounds kicking up into wind and out into adjacent residential neighborhoods.

It’s a threat that has persisted for decades, probably lifetimes, in South and Southwest Philly neighborhoods surrounding the former PES site, as it has for dozens of other “fenceline” communities located near petroleum sites across the country.

In 2018, the EPA implemented a new rule that required such refineries to monitor for spikes in benzene levels and seek out sources of high emissions. Data analyzed by the

Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) the following year found that the PES site had the highest benzene concentrations among more than 100 refineries, adding to concerns long held in surrounding neighborhoods that air pollution from the refinery was driving up rates of illnesses like asthma and cancer.

But emissions from the site took on further mystery when EIP reviewed data for 2021 — two years after the refinery’s closure — and found high spikes of benzene levels that still ranked among the worst in the country. Similar unexplained spikes continued all the way through December 2022, when Hilco stopped monitoring benzene at the fenceline, arguing that it was unnecessary because refining operations had ceased.

Grid reviewed benzene data from the former PES site in the months and years leadJ UN E 20 23 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 17

A plume of benzene is predicted to spread underground beneath the newly-built, luxury Siena Place development over the next 30 years.

ing up to the December cessation and found that although benzene levels did appear to be decreasing overall, strange spikes were still common. In the final month of monitoring, benzene levels at the site’s fenceline averaged 1.37 micrograms per cubic meter of air. That compares to an average of 0.50 micrograms taken at four different sites across the city in 2021. The EPA calculates that significant cancer risk begins when benzene is inhaled long-term somewhere between 0.13 to 0.45 micrograms.

In addition, benzene spikes at different locations along the fenceline in the four months leading up to the cessation of air monitoring averaged about 8.72 micrograms per cubic meter, hovering just below an EPA action level of 9 that requires active refineries to investigate the source of potential leaks. It also represented an upward trend over months prior.

In an email, Hilco pushed back on this analysis, saying it was not “scientifically sound” to compare average fenceline levels from the site to other locations in the city or the EPA’s cancer risk measurements.

“The Bellwether District site is located in an industrial corridor with active industrial sites in near proximity,” the company wrote, maintaining that “the former PES refinery’s benzene concentrations in outdoor air at the site are consistent with concentrations 18 GR ID P H I L LY.CO M JU NE 2 0 23

in other areas of Philadelphia and in other urban areas around the country.”

New analysis later this year might shed new light on the question. Sheila Tripathy, a senior research scientist at Drexel University, will be working this summer with Philly Thrive to install dozens of new air monitors for benzene, lead and other contaminants in fenceline areas, which could provide new insight.

“With all of the news about benzene and it still being an issue even while the refinery was being decommissioned, we will try to get a sense of what if any emissions are still impacting communities outside of the refinery,” Tripathy said.

Looking forward, Zerbo points out that advocates also remain acutely concerned about the expected increase in delivery truck exhaust fumes, which also contain benzene, as the site develops into a logistics and warehousing hub.

Who knows what’s in the water Perhaps scariest to groups like Philly Thrive and the Clean Air Council are the unknowns. Hilco and Evergreen are both still working to fully investigate the site: where are all the chemicals, in what amounts, and where might they be heading next?

Water is a wildcard. The aquifer beneath the site is not used for drinking water, as

chemical plumes from the former PES refinery mix in with myriad other sources of urban pollution, which long ago left groundwater unfit for human consumption. In some regards that places less importance on cleaning up the aquifer as would be the case in more suburban or rural areas. But in other ways it potentially leaves risks overlooked.

For one, consider wildlife. A June 2022 report from Evergreen noted that it is “likely” chemicals from the site are winding up in the adjacent Schuylkill River as contaminated groundwater enters into it. Even still, Evergreen’s staff analyzed risks to species such as the marsh wren, peregrine falcon, sturgeon and northern red-bellied turtle and determined there would be no or minimal risks for various reasons.

The Clean Air Council filed comments criticizing the analysis. During their official reviews last year, the DEP, EPA and other agencies largely echoed their concerns. State regulators said the report failed to consider plant life, did not take sufficient samples of sediment in the river and in general did not adequately evaluate possible chemical pathways, among other critiques.

The EPA also pointed out various errors, including that the report’s authors did not evaluate risks to macroinvertebrates and also claimed that fish species in the river would be fine because their bodies metabolize the chemicals in question.

“The author(s) of these statements apparently are unfamiliar with a large body of research showing that it is exactly the metabolism … that leads to a wide variety of toxicity in exposed fish, such as DNA adducts, liver lesions and tumorigenesis, and toxic impacts on fish growth and reproduction,” the EPA wrote.

The finding holds additional importance because people eat fish found in the tidal Schuylkill.

Both agencies issued deficiency letters; Evergreen will now have to redo the reports.

A company spokesperson said Evergreen is working on those revisions and noted that such back-and-forth is a “common part of the regulatory process.”

But the threat of additional chemical releases now and in the future also raise concerns.

Even as Hilco worked to break down and clean up the remnants of refinery operations over the past few years, new hazards emerged. A February update from Hilco not-

ed several instances of spills as the company dismantled old equipment at the site, including an incident in October 2022 when a mixture of oil and water overflowed from a separating unit, traveled down a roadway, slipped through cracks of the bulkheads abutting the Schuylkill River and poured into it.

Zerbo says one of his greatest concerns with Hilco’s encapsulation strategy are exactly these types of events. With the majority of the site’s 1,300 acres set for impervious surfaces, he’s keyed in on the potential for future flooding, which Zerbo worries could disturb contaminants still held in the site’s soil and redistribute them into the river or surrounding neighborhoods. The same is true for groundwater: as the climate changes, so too could hydraulic conditions beneath Philadelphia, potentially pushing the aquifer into highly contaminated soils currently considered unreachable at the site.

Already, a map located deep within a June 2022 Evergreen report depicts a benzene plume migrating outside the site’s boundaries over the next 30 years and beneath Siena Place, a new development of luxury townhomes in Packer Park. Evergreen says that plume is actually the responsibility of the federal Defense Logistics Agency, and that it understands there are already measures to monitor and “mitigate” fumes from the plume in adjacent areas.

Still, Zerbo says he wishes the redevelopment plan at the site called for fewer impervious surfaces and more naturalized areas. Certain plant species can speed up the breakdown of harmful chemicals in soil and water, as well as limit soil erosion, runoff and flooding. Such practices are a hallmark of cleanups at other sites, like the Clearview

Landfill and Ambler Asbestos Piles.

“The most responsible remediation plans are the ones that use bioremediation,” Zerbo says. “That would be the most protective of public health.”

The companies’ counter that they are acting responsibly and with flooding in mind.

A Hilco official told Grid the soil plan is designed specifically to bury the most contaminated soils and ensure they aren’t subject to runoff.

“Existing, interim and future stormwater discharge will be monitored and approved

by DEP,” Alcivar added. “New drainage infrastructure in the concept plan to manage water flows includes innovative measures such as new piping networks, retention basins and bioswales.”

Evergreen also said it was taking into account climate change and future flooding and drought conditions.

Plans and problems In totality, Hilco and Evergreen paint a cleanup picture that looks like this: soil capping and building foundations will keep future workers protected from exposure risks, while continued water treatment technologies will clean and control contaminated plumes in groundwater. Newly elevated areas and stormwater management systems will keep flooding under control.

Whether such plans are deemed adequate is up to the regulators. As Hilco and Evergreen move forward with their environmental investigations and cleanups, they must regularly issue reports to the DEP and EPA for approval. Many recent attempts haven’t made the grade: in addition to Evergreen’s 2022 ecological risk assess-

ment that the EPA said incorrectly analyzed risks to fish, the DEP also issued a long list of “deficiencies” for a second Evergreen report that sought to analyze how toxic substances could move throughout the site.

Hilco is also engaged in a back-and-forth with the agencies as it seeks to finalize cleanup plans for various contaminated areas under its purview.

Zerbo says he has been “very happy” to see the regulatory agencies keep a keen eye on the cleanup so far. The companies maintain it’s just the norm.

But Zerbo also notes that the whole process is mostly just about liability. Under the primary state law under which the cleanup is being conducted, Hilco and Evergreen are ultimately seeking a signoff that would declare their legal responsibilities fulfilled and offer protection from litigation.

Whether or not construction can proceed is a separate matter under the purview of the City, which is why Hilco is eyeing a groundbreaking in 2023 even though it may take years to get final approval for its cleanup plans. Technically, the regulators — the EPA in particular — hold authority to halt construction or operations for significant safety concerns, Zerbo says, but he views that as an unlikely option.

As evidenced by Philly Thrive and Drexel’s plans to install independent air monitors and the Clean Air Council’s watchful eye, Zerbo says the groups will continue pushing for the best outcome.

“The whole situation is so extreme,” says Zerbo. “To make this site safe will take a massive, massive effort from private landowners, regulators, impacted community members and nonprofits.” ◆

J UN E 20 23 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 1 9

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Final Impact Many of us are committed to living sustainably, but few of us have given much thought to dying sustainably.

But as with any other phase of our life cycle, the impact of our death can vary based on the choices we make.

What we do with the deceased body is the obvious place to start: how it impacts the earth once it is in the ground or broken down by heat or chemicals. Given that many of the deceased will be laid to rest in the ground, we can consider how we tend and even enjoy the land above them.

And then there is all of our stuff. You can’t take it with you, as the saying goes, and so loved ones are often faced with the challenge of how to use, sell or recycle an estate’s worth of possessions.

For virtually all of human history and prehistory, traditional practices and rituals provided structure to all of our life stages, death included. Some of these are so deeply ingrained that they seep into how we handle the deaths of other creatures. Unfortunately, in our modern, atomistic society we are too often left trying to figure it out on our own. It can all feel like too much to manage, but luckily there are there are professionals — death doulas — to offer a helping hand.

We hope that you and your loved ones don’t have to deal with any of this in the immediate future, but, since death is inevitable, we hope this issue helps you plan to die as you lived. –>

J UN E 20 23 G R I DP HI L LY.COM 21

F I N A L I M PAC T

John Romani helps people process the belongings of their departed loved ones.

PARTING WAYS Shedding the earthly possessions of a deceased loved one can be overwhelming, but there are people to help story by ben seal • photography by chris baker evens

G

like Goodwill Industries and Habitat for Humanity to find a second home for as many things as possible. The rest heads to a junkyard or landfill. The whole process takes two or three days — even less for a smaller home.

“Nobody ever wants to get rid of memories, but it’s also really hard to do it on your own, so there’s a sense of relief in the speed with which we can operate and the notion that we’re handling it in general,” McNichol says.

Although he aims to keep as much out of landfills as possible, McNichol acknowledges that it’s a challenge to find a good home for much of what people leave behind. Mid-century modern furniture carries plenty of appeal, but pieces from the 1970s and ’80s that have gone out of style aren’t likely to attract attention.

John Romani has been running Sales

By Helen, which operates estate sales, for about five years, ever since his mother (the company’s namesake) passed away. He says the process looked different 20 years ago, when the things in people’s homes still had value. But fine china, glassware, crystal and linens have given way to assembly-line furniture and disposable dishware. Now, those

rief hangs like a shroud. The memories from so many years together come rushing back in a storm of emotions. There are phone calls to make, condolences to share and a funeral to plan. And in the midst of it all sits a houseful of things: the books, furniture, memorabilia and heirlooms that are the remains of a person’s life.

The process of cleaning out a home after a friend or family member’s death is cumbersome and complicated, full of difficult decisions about what to keep and what to do with everything else. It’s a heavy lift in more ways than one. If it’s too much to handle without a helping hand, there’s an industry of supportive professionals ready to step in and carry some of the weight.

Patrick McNichol, the owner of Havertown-based Main Line Junk Removal, works with families in the wake of a death to distinguish what should be kept, donatPeople can’t even talk to me on the phone because ed and discarded. He typically delivers the they’re breaking down when they talk about these items most desirable items to family members’ homes and then works with organizations and what they mean.” // JOHN ROMANI, Sales by Helen

22 GRID PH IL LY.CO M JU NE 2023

high-quality goods are harder to sell. Romani, who says his job description includes “25% therapist,” sometimes has to tell families that a seemingly valuable item is either going to an art teacher for a mosaic project or straight to a dumpster.

“It was easier when it was worth money,” Romani says. “People could take a couple thousand dollars in exchange for their memories.”

In the average home, Romani says, about 60 percent of items can be sold, 20 percent get donated and the rest ends up in a landfill, despite his best efforts to reduce waste.

But regardless of its destination, anything with a connection to a deceased relative carries its own significance.

“People can’t even talk to me on the phone because they’re breaking down when they talk about these items and what they mean,” Romani says. “My wife says I professionally disappoint people, because they attach a value to that sentimentality that doesn’t exist.”

In some cases, Romani conducts a Facebook giveaway following an estate sale, leaving the remnants to be picked over by community members rather than trashed.

It’s not a fit for every family, but he has seen hundreds of people show up to take home items.

“That is a direct pipeline to the community,” Romani says. “People are taking those towels home and using them.”

As the cleanout industry has expanded, professional organizers like Annie Kilbride at Life Simplified have become a bigger part of the process. She helps families navigate the overwhelming period after a death by educating them about what they need to do and helping them address all the clutter that remains.

She sometimes makes dozens of calls in her quest to find a home for used goods, knowing that so much of what outlives us retains our imprint and throwing it out is a fraught proposition.

“We like to hear stories,” Kilbride says.

“Sometimes little things might seem like nothing, but when we’re working with a family member they can tell us a story about a piece of cloth or clothing. We try to cherish that by taking pictures so that story can still live on with the family.” ◆

What Are They Telling Us? Artist honors victims of birdwindow collisions

In the fall of 2020 Maria DiMauro, an artist who lives in Old City, opened her Facebook account and clicked through pictures of warblers, vireos and catbirds that had died by crashing into Center City windows. She saw more than just dead birds.

The pictures had been taken on October 2, 2020

by Stephen Maciejewski, who volunteers collecting data on birds that collide with windows.

The migrating songbirds, drawn in by city lights on a night with low clouds, had touched down confused, exhausted and hungry, and had done what comes naturally, flying towards trees or bushes that they didn’t realize were on the other side of glass or were simply reflections.

Maciejewski collected hundreds, but those were only a fraction of the estimated 1,500 that died in Philadelphia that day.

DiMauro saw echoes of Renaissance art. “The reverence, cradling birds in his bare hands. It’s done so lovingly that it reminded me of those religious images like the Pietà [depictions of Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus],” she says. “They have such an emotional impact. It’s not just somebody taking pictures.”

Bird-window collisions kill up to a billion birds every year in the United States. Ornithologists have known about the problem for a long time — windows rank behind only housecats (2.4 billion) on the long list of ways that humans kill birds — but the event in Philadelphia caught the public’s attention and sparked Bird Safe Philly, a collaboration of conservation groups and building owners and managers working to fight the problem.

DiMauro reached out to Maciejewski for permission and then got to work drawing the birds from his photos in graphite and in silverpoint (using a metal stylus in place of a pencil) for a show at Cerulean Arts she had on the calendar for the spring of 2023. She initially planned to make 1,500 images, one for each of the birds estimated to have died in the mass mortality event, but she realized she wouldn’t hit that mark. Each drawing took eight to 20 hours, and some did not turn out in the end.

The work also took its toll emotionally. “After I draw a few of them I have to draw a nest,” DiMauro says. “I have to purge. In drawing them I want to give them life. You want to honor that bird but also give it that kind of reverence.”

“The other thing about birds to me, they are to me like omens or messengers. I think of them that way spiritually but also as the canary in the coal mine. What are they telling us?” DiMauro says. “It’s also emblematic that people can just walk by them on the street. It’s symbolic about what we’re doing to other species, and we just don’t think about it.”

DiMauro finished 16 drawings for the show, which ran through April 9. She will work on the birds in some way beyond this set, “but the drawings might take a different direction,” DiMauro says. “Maybe I’ll do those 1,500 birds one of these days.” —Bernard Brown

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F I N A L I M PAC T

EASING THE BURDEN Death doulas offer guidance and comfort through the inevitable story by ben seal • photography by chris baker evens

K

ai wonder was preparing for graduate school when everything changed. Just as they were getting ready to pursue a master’s degree in social work, their mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She was given less than a year to live.

In the process of grappling with their anxiety about death, Wonder began to research the options for the months ahead and came across a training to become a death doula — a guide for the end of life. They ultimately brought in another doula to support their mother and the family through the process of dying and all it entails, but the experience set them on a new path. Now, several years later, after completing the M.S.W., Wonder is a member of the Philly Death Doula Collective, providing for other families the same care and consideration that brought comfort to their mother’s last days.

In doing so, Wonder is part of a growing movement of people working to reclaim death as a sacred part of life and restore methods of navigating the experience that have been lost to America’s industrialized medical system.

“Historically, families did this type of work. It wasn’t professionalized. There didn’t have to be a death-positive movement,” Wonder, a self-described “grief advocate,” says. “This was communal, holistic, organic care that happened in your small little world. What I learned in my grieving was that this stuff isn’t talked about and it’s not modeled.”

More than 90% of Americans think it’s important to discuss their loved ones’ and their own end-of-life wishes, but only about one-third have actually done so, according to research from The Conversation Project, an initiative from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement that encourages more people to think about and share their plans for a good death.

End-of-life doulas help individuals and families overcome the barriers to some

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of the most difficult conversations they’ll ever have, offering a combination of logistical support and companionship that can help people die on their own terms.

“So much of what we’re trying to do at the Collective is get this conversation about death and what matters at the end of life into people’s living rooms and everyday talk,” Wonder says.

Doulas are more commonly associated with the birthing process, where they have been proven to reduce trauma and improve the welfare of mothers and babies, but death workers like Wonder are increasingly bringing the same attentive approach to the end of life. The International End-of-Life Doula Association (INELDA) has trained more than 5,600 individuals, including Wonder, to help people develop advance care directives, plan their own funerals, create legacy projects, approach emotional conversations and confront mortality. INELDA is

The hope is we’re normalizing this so people are able to make choices based on what matters to them, as opposed to fear or panic.” // KAI WONDER, death doula just one of many organizations that offer training; approaches vary from spiritual to clinical to academic.

Work of this sort has been done by family and community members across cultures for eons, INELDA’s executive director, Doug Simpson, says. But over time — and especially in the U.S. — the experience of caring for the dying has been shunted on the health care system.

He is part of a movement seeking to walk back that shift by returning to the way things once were.

“Death became part of living. Living became part of death. And we’ve gotten removed from that,” Simpson says. “Bringing death back into the home is a way to open

up our willingness to sit with death.”

Jamie Eaddy, a reverend and theologian who has spent more than 20 years “journeying” with people at the end of life, as she calls it, says death is “not so much a medical event but a biological one.” With that in mind, she wants to reclaim the experience from the medical system and explore what it means to “bring it back to the people.” At Thoughtful Transitions, her Philadelphia-based company, she offers doula services and grief support, as well as consultation and education, often working with marginalized communities that bear the brunt of a more institutionalized approach to care.

During the pandemic, she saw a surge Left: End-of-life doula Belle Sandella holds a picture of the late cousin who inspired her career.

Below: A mezuzah from a client’s house, a gift Sandella received from the family.

P HOTO GRA P H Y BY C H R IS BA KE R EV E N S

in people training to become end-of-life guides, motivated by the sense that everyone was being touched by death.

“We aren’t intended to live forever.

What does it mean to think about that differently — to sit with the fact that we are temporary beings here?” Eaddy says.

“That is something that I think folks are starting to think about more and more.”

Like many other doulas, she wants to offer something more than a “last days, last-moments-after-diagnosis” service, she says. While doulas often sit with clients in their final hours — or help prepare family members to do the same — they are sometimes called in before death is on the doorstep, when they can share their knowledge about the process of dying without the weight of its immediacy hanging over a family.

“The hope is we’re normalizing this so people are able to make choices based on what matters to them, as opposed to fear or panic,” Wonder says.

Belle Sandella, an end-of-life doula in the Philadelphia region, was a cardiac and telemetry nurse for years but never felt like it was the right fit for her. She regularly found herself spending too much time in patients’ rooms, she says. After offering support to a cousin who died of brain cancer, she was inspired to take INELDA’s training and has discovered a newfound comfort working with people preparing for death.

Sandella serves as a project manager of sorts, she says, providing emotional support while also helping clients and their families identify everything that’s needed — and who can provide it — in the dying process. She urges people to have these difficult conversations before it’s too late, because “knowledge is power” — and often the difference between a beautiful death and a traumatic one.

For Wonder, planning for what’s to come is a gift to those who will be left behind, a burden that can be lifted so that a passing can be met with all the meaning and significance it deserves.

“Death matters,” Wonder says. “It’s just as important as all the other transitional moments in life.” ◆

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F I N A L I M PAC T

Laurel Hill’s Eric Ellerbe and Nancy Goldenberg.

BASIC SOLU TION Could alkaline hydrolysis be the body disposition option for you? story by sophia d. merow • photography by rachael warriner

I

f you want to go — ultimately, that is — the way of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu, better call (email, write to … ) your legislators.

When the South African theologian and human rights activist died in December 2021, his remains underwent — per his request — alkaline hydrolysis. Alkaline hydrolysis (AH) combines water, alkaline chemicals such as potassium hydroxide, heat and sometimes pressure and agitation to decompose a body faster than would happen underground. The end product of the three- to 20-hour process is bone fragments, which can be pulverized and then placed in an urn or scattered, and a sterile liquid containing salts, sugars, peptides and amino acids. This effluent can

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be treated as wastewater or repurposed as fertilizer.

First patented in the United States in 1888 by Englishman Amos Herbert Hobson as a means of transforming animal carcasses into plant food, AH was deployed more than a century later at Albany Medical College to cheaply dispose of labratory rabbits and in Britain to neutralize the infectious mad cow disease. In 2006 a “tissue digester” sold by WR2, a (since folded) company founded by the Albany Medical College scientists, became the first single-body human AH system in commercial operation. Installed at the renowned Mayo Clinic, it replaced the incinerator used to process donated human cadavers.

No lab animal or research subject, Tutu opted for AH because of its environmental bona fides. (It was “what he aspired to as an eco-warrior,” said Reverend Michael

The pet alkaline hydrolysis unit at Laurel Hill.

Because nothing is burned during the procedure, no toxic gases or air pollutants are produced.” // MARY JO DALEY AND CHRISTOPHER RABB, PA House of Representatives Weeder.) In a January 2022 memorandum to members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, Mary Jo Daley and Christopher Rabb — who represent parts of Montgomery County and Northwest Philadelphia, respectively — touted AH as “more environmentally friendly” than traditional burial and cremation. “More than four million gallons of toxic embalming fluids and 20 million feet of wood are put in the ground in the U.S. every year, while a single flame cremation emits as much carbon dioxide as a 1,000-mile car trip,” the pair wrote. “Because nothing is burned during the [AH] procedure, no toxic gases or air pollutants are produced.”

Radnor-born John Clay, a sometime organic farmer, considered going into the AH business before discovering that the pricey equipment — the AH unit he was looking to buy from Indiana-based Bio-Response Solutions would have run him around $90,000 — posed a “financial barrier of entry.” Clay had come to appreciate AH when deaths of loved ones acquainted him with the country’s “death industry.”

Traditional burial turns “entire swaths of land into Superfund sites,” he mourns.

And cremation is “really not a great option either,” he says, citing fossil fuel usage and social justice concerns. Too often crematories are located in “poor communities that

pretty much have no ability to fight off this mercury being pumped into the air.” Although likely far from death’s door himself, thirty-something Clay is already adamant about standard means of body disposition: “That’s ... certainly not what I want.”

Clay might, in the end, prefer green burial or natural organic reduction (aka human composting) to AH, but Laurel Hill president and CEO Nancy Goldenberg reports that a dozen area families have “preneeded for” — funeral industry lingo for “specified an advance preference for” — AH once it is legalized for human remains in Pennsylvania. Laurel Hill has offered AH for deceased pets since 2018, and its facility, adjacent to The Laurels Pet Center in Bala Cynwyd, has helped raise awareness.

Many a pet parent has toured the space — marveling at its gleaming stainless steel chamber and its so-clean-you-could-eatoff-them floors — as have Reps. Daley and Rabb. System operator Eric Ellerbe hopes his explanations of AH will equip — and inspire — visitors to spread the word.

“Usually when I tell them about it, they’re excited about the process,” he says. “That lets me know that they’ll tell others.”

Not everyone is excited about AH. In a March 2023 statement, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops argued that AH “does not show adequate

respect for the human body, nor express hope in the resurrection.” Much of the opposition to AH comes, advocates say, from established funeral homes with a financial stake in maintaining the status quo. Sensationalist misinformation about the process gained so much traction on social media in March that The Associated Press and USA Today published fact checks to set the record straight.

One practitioner villainized in the voiced-over videos circulating online, Dean Fisher, raves about the process he pioneered as the Mayo Clinic’s director of anatomical bequests — “there’s not a better technology out there” — but stresses that he’s not trying to force it on anyone. “All I want is for it to be a choice,” he says.

Currently permitted by law for humans in only 28 states (and not actually available in all of those), AH often achieves legal status via a linguistic sleight of hand that probably makes chemists squirm. Jurisdictions expand the definition of “cremation” to include AH (aka “aquamation,” “water cremation,” or “flameless cremation”). To quote the Cremation Association of North America, “from the consumer’s perspective the processes and results are similar.”

Contacted in April, Rep. Rabb reported that he and Rep. Daley would soon be reintroducing bills aimed at legalizing both AH and natural organic reduction in the Keystone State. “My hope is that one or both bills will come up for a vote by the end of June in the House Commerce Committee on which I serve,” he wrote in an email.

Isabel Knight — Philadelphia resident, president of the National Home Funeral Alliance, and AH advocate — sees AH as “a sustainable alternative to the current methods” for those who might find green burial “prohibitively expensive.” Once a bill actually comes out, she says, it will be time for folks to “get activated.” What might that look like? “Calling your own representative,” says Knight, “and saying, ‘Hey, I really want you to support this bill, and here’s why.’” ◆ To keep abreast of advocacy opportunities, follow Knight on Instagram @thedeathdesigner.

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LI V ING W ITH TH E DEAD The peaceful landscape of The Woodlands Cemetery invites nature and people in story by dawn kane • photography by rachael warriner

O

n an april morning the heat soars into the realm of summer as a runner cruises back and forth along a paved path. A pair of chatting college students overtakes a man walking a spotted dog. And beyond the green borders, urban sounds from sirens and passing trolleys fade as birdsong rises through the trees. The Woodlands, a cemetery that is home to gardens, graves and wildlife and the former estate of amateur botanist William Hamilton (1745–1813), invites the living to come in, slow down and breathe.

Emma Max, public programs and operations manager, says that staff works to create a balance between offering a welcoming space to the community and honoring the needs of those seeking a quiet, contemplative space for grief and reflection. Burials take place in a space apart from what Max calls the “historic Hamilton core,” which is used for public events. “We are a Victorian era cemetery, and there’s a history of people spending leisure time in cemeteries and picnicking and being happy here,” she says.

In the early days the land took shape after Hamilton, who inherited the estate in 1767, made it his life’s work to develop the property to rival reigning English fashion of the time.

After Hamilton’s death, however, family members sold off bits of the land until The Wood-

The Woodlands’ Emma Max and Jessica Baumert.

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lands Cemetery Company acquired what was left in 1840. According to the website, the company’s goal was to protect the remaining land as a “rural cemetery.”

Today, 54 acres remain of the original 600-acre estate; the parcel has been preserved as a National Historic Landmark District since 1967. The Woodlands maintains an active cemetery business, selling up to 30 plots per year for burials and cremations. Visitors make use of paved carriage paths throughout and wheelchair-accessible bathrooms. For public events, staff uses temporary ramps for the mansion steps.

Trees and other plants grow throughout the grounds, which provide a home to pol-

linators and animals that visitors might not expect: foxes, resident hawks and migratory birds that use the space as a stopover point. “Keeping as much of a habitat that can sustain those creatures is something that we really are proud to be able to do,” Max says. “You can step in through the gates and be surrounded by nature. We strive to make The Woodlands a hub for nature and for people who have difficulty accessing it in other ways,” Max says as she points out the trolley stop across the street.

A corps of 150 volunteer gardeners, supported by Robin Rick, facilities and landscape manager, maintains the habitat and continues the landscaping traditions started by Hamilton. Before new gardeners put a hand to the soil, they take part in training sessions to learn about plant maintenance, historic preservation and Victorian gardening. Today many visitors come in the spring to see the extravagant blooms nestled in Victorian cradle graves. Iris varietals thrive throughout the grounds, some dating back to the early 1900s. The oldest

Families love to plant trees, but people often don’t think 100 years in the future.” // EMMA MAX, The Woodlands tree, a damaged hedge maple, may have been planted by Hamilton himself. “It’s a symbol of resilience,” Max says.

The Woodlands wasn’t always like this.

Jessica Baumert, The Woodlands executive director, came on board in 2011 with a background in historic preservation. She lives in the neighborhood, and, prior to taking the position, she would visit to go running. She describes it as mowed and tidy at that time but without many visitors. “It clearly was not meeting its full potential,” she says.

Now on a nice day “there’s a constant flow of people in and out,” Baumert says.

She attributes much of this activity to the expanded public programming. In the past two years staff has worked with 15 other community organizations. The Philadelphia Orchard Project, for example, has a learning orchard and bee hives on the grounds and educates visitors about plant and tree care. They open their orchard during the Nature Night series; they hold plant sales and volunteer work days.

Naomi Segal and Rie Brosco came out to admire the flowering azaleas recently.

“It’s thrilling to see,” Segal says.

The pair live in the neighborhood and have friends who are buried at The Woodlands, but Brosco says that the programming for the living is one of her favorite things about the cemetery. “It’s about all sorts of people coming and enjoying the natural beauty.”

Many famous folk are buried at the cemetery, including painter Thomas Eakins and his subject in “The Gross Clinic,” Dr. Samuel D. Gross. On a walk through the grounds, Max counsels that it’s okay to step over the graves, but one must do it with respect. She pauses to point out a tombstone that reads only “Cornelia.”

A soft olive lichen covers much of it, but

there’s no date to obscure. “It’s nice when a stone is a bit of a mystery,” she says.

Despite the help from outside partners, The Woodlands staff has a wish list of things they would like to implement.

Baumert explains that many people believe the City contributes funding, but the private cemetery’s funding comes from the cemetery business, grants and donations, which can make it a struggle to meet visitors’ needs. And annual visitorship doubled from 75,000 pre-pandemic to 150,000. Post-pandemic those numbers have remained steady. “We would like to have the bathrooms open on the weekends,” Baumert says, “but there isn’t funding for it.”

Fallen tombstones are another challenge, and visitors notice them. Staff relies on interns from the University of Pennsylvania’s Historic Preservation Department, another community partner, to help, but it takes time. No one likes to see the fallen stones, Max says, but the work involves stabilizing and leveling the ground, so “they’re safer on the ground.

Once we’re able to get the equipment in, we will reset [as many as] 50 stones.”

On a recent walk, Max points out a favorite tree, a towering London planetree that has overgrown its plot and incorporated a small border structure into its root system. “Families love to plant trees,” Max says, “but people often don’t think 100 years in the future.”

Although the community that has come to rely on The Woodlands may not be thinking far into the future, they can rest assured that someone is. “We are the caretakers of people,” Max says. “We hold that responsibility higher above all else …

We know, more than many people, that everyone dies eventually, and that life is really precious. But death is also a part of life.” ◆

J UN E 20 23 G R I DP HI L LY.COM 29

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F I N A L I M PAC T

ALL THAT REMAINS Exploring the sustainable—and not-so-sustainable—practices in the funeral industry written and illustrated by bryan satalino

D

eath is a hard topic to cover, and perhaps one of the harder parts is what to do with your body after you’ve passed away. For those of us who practice sustainability in life, it can be difficult to carry on this practice in death. Conventional funerals are incredibly resource intensive and toxic. According to the Green Burial Council, the funeral industry uses 4.3 million gallons of embalming fluid, 1.6 million tons of concrete, and 64,500 tons of steel each year. Cremation, once considered the “green” alternative to conventional burials, can also be energy intensive and toxic. In this graphic, we’ll explore the conventional methods as well as a variety of new ways that humans can be prepared for final disposition. Special thanks to Nancy Goldenberg, president and CEO of Laurel Hill Cemetery and West Laurel Hill Cemetery and Funeral Home for a wealth of information on this topic.

Conventional Burial

Cremation Cremation is slightly less carbon-intensive than conventional burials, and don’t take up as much land space. However, they still produce between 300 and 600 pounds of carbon dioxide each. Particulate matter from this process is also an issue, but many crematoriums employ scrubbers to pull harmful chemicals out of the emissions.

Aquamation Aquamation, or liquid hydrolysis, is a method that involves submerging the deceased in a highly basic formula. This process dissolves the soft tissues and leaves bone matter behind, which can them be pulverized and kept or spread like traditional cremains. The remaining liquid is safe to use as fertilizer or to be easily disposed. Unlike cremation, this process uses far less energy.

Human Composting Human composting, or “recomposition,” is exactly what it sounds like: a human body is placed in a rotating composter with organic matter. Within a few months, the body is reduced to soil, which can be returned to the family for spreading or as soil for planting.

This process is relatively new and only approved in 6 states as of writing.

Science Whole body donation is extremely important to the science and medical community.

Donations make it possible to improve surgical techniques, advance medical research and device testing, and assist with finding cures and treatments for diseases.

In Pennsylvania, there is a nonprofit called the Humanity Gifts Registry, which is the sole avenue for donation.

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Most funerals in the U.S. include the use of toxic embalming chemicals like formaldehyde to preserve the body, large and resource-intensive caskets built with wood, steel, copper and bronze, and a concrete vault in which to place the casket. Conventional burials in PA are expensive—averaging between $6,000 and $12,000.

Green Burial A Green Burial, as certified by the Green Burial Council, is one that strives for less environmental impact, a reduction of carbon emissions, the protection of worker health and the restoration or preservation of land.

Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia is a green burial site, featuring non-toxic embalming, biodegradable containers (sometimes simple pine boxes) and land conservation practices.

Mushroom Suit Human bodies are filled with toxic chemicals—BPA, mercury, heavy metals, VOCs, etc. To put it simply, burying a body is a form of pollution.

Mushrooms suits are shrouds doped with mycelium (mushroom roots), and are purported to help remediate the toxins in the soil. A big caveat—these claims seem to be pseudo-scientific and of limited (if any) benefit.

Forensic Science Throughout the U.S., there are places called “body farms” where human remains are placed and observed for forensic research. This research helps forensic anthropologists in deducing the time of death. There are limited space for this sort of donation, and additional limits including the prohibition of bodies with certain diseases.

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Stoneleigh: a natural garden Villanova, PA | 42 acres Photo by David Korbonits

Studying the environment is just good business Virtual Café Join the MES program team from 12-1 p.m. on the first Tuesday of every month for an online chat about your interests and goals.

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Environmental and legal studies may seem ancillary to a career as an investment analyst, but Zhao Liu (MES/ML/MS `25—expected) explains that a multidisciplinary skill set is essential for the job. “Investors should learn environmental and legal knowledge to navigate regulatory compliance, mitigate risk, and make responsible investment decisions,” he says. “I decided to go to Penn because I knew the MES is a very diverse and multidisciplinary program, so I can learn environmental and legal knowledge here and also strengthen my business background.” To that end, Zhao is completing Penn’s Master of Environmental Studies (MES) degree and a Master in Law as a dual degree program.

In a course about life cycle assessment, Zhao was inspired to research the carbon footprint of bottled water. To his surprise, the energy required for a single bottle of water—from production to distribution to disposal—is very high: imagine that same bottle filled up to the ¼ mark with oil instead of water. The personal cost can stack up too: drinking the recommended 8 glasses of water per day would total $1400 for bottled water consumers per year, compared to $0.49 for tap water. Zhao presented his findings at Penn Grad Talks, titled “From Bottled Water to Filtered Water: Save Money and Save the Earth.”

“That is just a very tiny idea from our online course, but it transferred into advocacy,” he says. “Some sustainability actions bring us benefits, such as saving money, and this applies not only to personal consumption but also to business practices, so why not take action?”

To learn more applications for Zhao’s combined studies of environmental science, business, and law, visit:

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